


Of Two Worlds

by pixlh3art



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fish out of Water, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Opposites Attract, Slow Burn, and now i have written fic of it, how on earth do i tag this, i may have tripped and written dungeons and dragons fanfiction, like... my dm had a campaign, like..... VERY slow, this is like a near-future story AND an isekai rolled into one basically, where my two player characters (EVENTUALLY) start dating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25682380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixlh3art/pseuds/pixlh3art
Summary: Vivian Noya is one of the youngest and most successful CEOs in 2030s London, after inheriting her father's technology company when he and her mother died in a car accident when Vivian was twenty-two. Then she discovered that magic is real, and she can perform it.Luxanna Starsinger grew up in a farming village which became home to a mysterious swordmaster when she was young - she eventually trains with him, and takes up his mantle as a monster hunter, discovering her own divine magic in the process.They are from completely different worlds, but thanks to a strange blending of universes referred to as The Bleed, they meet - and eventually, they fall in love...
Relationships: Vivian Noya (OC)/Luxanna Starsinger (OC)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	1. Calls

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!
> 
> Today is my birthday, and I've decided I'm going to make something *extremely* self-indulgent: This story is about my two D&D characters in an ongoing campaign that I'm playing with friends. It starts with canon, and will eventually drift around and in-between it, but yes, I *really am* posting my fanfic of the two characters that *I play* falling in love with one another, and I have absolutely no regrets.  
> This is going to be quite a bit of a slowburn, because I want to fully introduce both characters first, and then move onto the part where they *actually* meet face-to-face. However, I've been having an absolute *blast* writing this just for myself, so I've decided to post it just for fun. Not everything here is fully my own creation - I have my AMAZING Dungeon Master to thank, as well as the other players for their characters, most especially my (non-blood related, but in every other respect) sibling, who plays Vivian's twin brother Hanta, since so much of our backstory is shared. Credits in the end notes!
> 
> Lastly, for those of you who closely follow D&D and wanna know Mechanics(tm):  
> -Vivian is a Clockwork Soul Sorceress, who has taken her two most recent levels in Divination Wizard. She tends towards lightning spells, having taken Elemental Adept. My DM is letting me cheat a bit and still take spells that I have the slots for (so she knows 5th-level Wizard spells, despite having only 2 Wizard levels) with the trade-off being that I use this power to make *interesting* choices, not powerful ones. She's functionally a half-elf, but neither of her parents were directly Elvish - her English mother merely descends from them, as magic is only now "returning" to her world. She's inspired by Asami Sato, from the Legend of Korra series, visually and backstory-wise.  
> Luxanna is an Oath of the Ancients Paladin with no particular deity, just a sort of inherent natural/divine magic that has been mysteriously granted to her. She takes supportive/healing spells almost exclusively, and is still figuring out what her power is and how it works. She has a homebrew Whip Master feat, which makes whips an actually semi-worthwhile weapon for a character that isn't a Kensei Monk. Functionally, she has studded leather armor, but it's metal for ~the aesthetic.~ She's a human. She's visually inspired by Luxanna Crownguard from League of Legends, but is more buff, and more oriented towards melee weapons. Her history/fighting style is loosely inspired by Trevor Belmont, but in a world where he's a nice person.  
> At time of writing, both characters are level 9.

Vivian ran her hands through her raven hair in frustration.

All was relatively quiet in the mid-December evening, as nearly every other employee of Noya Industries had gone home for the week several hours ago. However, Vivian Noya herself stayed metaphorically chained to her desk, going over the details for Monday’s impending merger. It was the biggest acquisition that the company had made since she’d taken it over four years ago, rising straight to the position of CEO as per her late father’s will. Vivian had made _numerous_ changes to the corporation since then - mostly cutting ties with her father’s less-than-reputable associates and assuring that every step of the production line for their smartphones and tablets were sustainable and up to her standard of ethics. The public _loved_ the new changes, and their PR reputation had never been better.

The shadowy council of individuals on the Board, however, were less enthused - likely because, as it turns out, being sustainable and reputable was costing them quite a bit of money. 

“Maybe they’ll finally get off my arse once I buy out this stupid startup,” Vivian muttered. She shook her head with a sigh, checking her watch. 

Ten P.M.

Bloody hell. 

“Vivian?” Came a voice from her door. “What the hell are you still doing here?”

“Hey, June,” Vivian called tiredly as her assistant let herself into her unnecessarily large corporate office. She let a grin play over her face. “And what does it look like I’m doing? I’m at work, so I must be working.”

“I’d believe that if you ever did something _besides_ work,” June replied.

“Oi! I have been known to take meals,” Vivian protested. “According to legend, I even sleep sometimes.” 

“Sure you do,” June said, sitting in one of the plush chairs in front of Vivian’s desk. They were relatively new - her father had insisted on keeping a pair of ugly wooden ones in front of what used to be _his_ desk, saying that no one should be comfortable when addressing the CEO.

“Seriously, Viv,” June said, reaching a hand out to stop her boss from typing. “It’s past ten. I went home hours ago, had dinner with Freddy, and then I got a ping on the security system and I’m freaking out as I take a cab back to the office just to find out that you’re _still bloody here.”_

“Sorry,” Vivian said. “I went to pee a few minutes ago. I must not have told the custodians.”

June rolled her eyes. “Is the merger worrying you that much?”

“You could say that,” Vivian admitted, closing her laptop. “The Board continues to be _very_ upset that I’m not my father, so I really have to get this stupid thing right or they’ll just keep getting in my bloody way.”

“They’re going to hate you regardless, aren’t they?” June said, sympathetic. “I know the merger is important, but c’mon - the only thing those old farts care about is their money, and that’s not your priority.”

“I know,” Vivian agreed with a sigh. “I’m just trying to mend the bridge.”

“Well, maybe one of _those_ arseholes could try picking up a hammer and giving you a hand at it before you work yourself to the bone,” June suggested. She met Vivian’s eyes. “Come on, Viv. Go home. Get some rest. You can pick this up on Monday - I’ll come by your flat tomorrow morning to help you through it if you like.”

“No, no, you’re right,” Vivian admitted, shakily pulling herself out of her chair. “I’m just being paranoid - all the details are set, I just have to work my magic when the meeting actually comes.”

“There you go,” June said approvingly. “Want me to call you a cab?”

“Not really in the mood to go home,” Vivian said. She shrugged, leaning against the edge of her desk. “Still not used to the empty bed.”

“That bad, huh?” June asked sympathetically. “Since the breakup?”

“Yeah,” Vivian replied. “For the record, _you_ introduced me to her. It’s entirely your fault.”

“Oh yes, because when we first met, she told me, ‘If you ever set me up with your best friend, I’ll be sure to date her for a year and then spontaneously leave her at a bar in Tokyo,’” June replied dryly. “I’m sorry, I meant to tell you.”

Vivian rolled her eyes, gazing out the window once more. One of the few perks of her _immensely_ stressful job was that her office had a hell of a view.

“Hey, empty bed or not, you should _really_ get some sleep,” June said.

Vivian turned, meeting her lifelong best friend in the eyes. “Stay with me?” She asked, her voice small.

June raised an eyebrow. “I’m straight, remember? We learned this when we were sixteen.”

“I remember,” Vivian said dryly. “I _also_ happen to remember that you had a lovely pair of tits for the brief moment I got to look at them. Freddy really doesn’t know how good he has it.”

“If you’re flirting with me, then you must _really_ be exhausted,” June said, completely unbothered by Vivian’s comment.

“I am,” Vivian admitted. “But when I asked you to stay, I just meant... here. Talk with me, for a while?”

“What about?” June asked, standing up from her chair to lean her back against the rich mahogany of the desk.

“Anything but work,” Vivian replied, sitting next to her. She let out an exhausted sigh as she finally settled in, facing the door.

June thought for a moment. “Do you still have that scotch your mum gave you for your twenty-first?”

“Pretty sure,” Vivian said. She started to stand, but it took her enough visible effort that June decided to go instead. “Bottom drawer, on the right,” Vivian said, gratefully flopping back down against the desk.

“Bingo,” June reported as she slid open the drawer. She returned with a needlessly intricate blown-glass bottle and two short, wide crystal glasses. She let out a little chuckle as she sat back down. “Been a while since I held alcohol worth more than I make in a year.”

“With the pay cut I took after giving the bottom half of the company those raises, that bottle is probably half of what _I_ make in a year,” Vivian replied.

“Bugger off,” June said. “I know your salary.”

“Fine, fine,” Vivian relented, taking the glass that June poured. “A _quarter_ of what I make in a year. Before taxes.”

“There it is,” June said with a laugh, clinking their glasses.

The two enjoyed silence for a little while, listening to the ambient sounds of the city below. The north of London was usually quiet around this time of night, at least in their financial district, but a fair amount of cars were still on the road - likely shoppers getting ready for the holidays.

“How’s your brother?” June asked. 

“Fuck if I know,” Vivian said, taking a sip. 

“Wait, seriously?” June replied. “You hired that P.I. _six_ months ago and he still hasn’t found a trace of Hanta?”

“He _did_ just sort of purposefully get lost in the south of China,” Vivian said. “And he broke my bloody satellite phone in less than a month.”

“I still can’t believe he left,” June said.

“No, I get it,” Vivian said. “As much as I hate being away from him... you were there, when we were kids. The _second_ Mum and Dad found out he couldn’t see...”

“The title of ‘future CEO’ fell to you, I remember,” she said. 

“It wasn’t _just_ that,” Vivian replied. “They always treated Han like he was... broken. Worthless, even. It was bloody infuriating, honestly - when he found out that that social worker, the _only_ adult who was ever kind to him, had been _hired_ by them...”

“I can’t imagine,” June murmured.

“Neither can I - and I was _there,”_ Vivian said. “Lydia _was_ kind, to her credit, and not just because of their money. But Han felt pretty... _betrayed,_ I think, when he learned of it. He never trusted them again.”

“Can’t say I blame him,” June admitted. “Your dad was kind of the worst.”

“Don’t sell Mum short - she neglected us just as much as he did,” Vivian countered.

“Well, if nothing else, they’re not exactly around to bother you anymore,” June said. Despite the implication of the statement, it was _genuinely_ meant as comfort - and taken as such.

“You say that, but here I am, running Dad’s company and drinking Mum’s scotch.”

“To be fair, it _is_ very good scotch.”

“I suppose you have me there.”

* * *

“Good morning, Mister Greyvalor!”

The aging human looked away from the apple he had been examining in the small village’s marketplace to meet a bright, gap-toothed grin from a young girl - she was barely up to his waist, and waving enthusiastically.

“Good morning to you too, Luxanna,” he said with a chuckle.

“Do you think you’re gonna buy that apple?” She asked brightly - she appeared to be more concerned with understanding his feelings about the fruit than with helping her family farm make the sale.  
“You know, I think I just might,” he said, trying to give her a patient smile.

“That’s great! Say, why do you have a sword on your belt?”

“Luxanna, leave the poor man alone,” the much taller blonde behind the fruit stand scolded. The child pouted. “Run along, now,” she said sternly. With reluctance, the girl turned on her heel, running out into the marketplace to play with the other kids.

“I’m so sorry about her,” the woman apologized as he fished through his coin purse. “She’s just always so full of energy, and she’s never been able to let people keep to themselves.”

“It’s all right,” he said, handing over the coins. He looked over at the rambunctious girl - her mother’s scoldings already forgotten, she was happily yelling and tackling her fellow children as they play-fought. Despite her rather _enthusiastic_ attempts to ask about his sword, there was something about the girl that brought a smile to his lips. “I don’t really mind.”

* * *

After a few more minutes of peaceful silence, Vivian’s cell phone began to ring on her desk.

“Bloody hell,” she muttered, carefully placing her glass on the lush carpet before standing up. “What on Earth do you want at ten o’clock in the bloody - oh.”

“Oh?” June asked.

“It’s... the P.I.,” she responded, picking up.

_“Hello. Ms. Noya?”_

“Speaking,” Vivian replied - it took at least a little bit of effort to not slur her words with the deadly combination of fatigue and alcohol running through her body. “Have you found him?”

 _“I believe so, yes,”_ the voice on the other end replied. _“He’s got himself a small cabin in the woods - are you sure it’s safe for me to approach?”_

“For the last time, he’s not a bloody criminal, he just doesn’t have a phone and he probably forgot my number,” Vivian said. 

_“Sorry, ma’am - I just... your request was very different from my usual clientele.”_

“I recall,” Vivian said. “Where is he? Still China?”

_“Actually, ma’am... we’re in Scotland right now.”_

Vivian blinked. Four years ago, she’d bought her brother a one-way plane ticket to China less than two weeks after their parents’ joint funeral, so that he could find himself. He’d told Vivian that he would go wherever his travels took him, but...

“Scotland?” Vivian asked. “We’ve been searching for him for six months and he’s still here in the UK?”

“Not anymore, technically,” June said. “Remember? Their independence vote finally went through back in 2028.”

“Oh right,” Vivian muttered. “But still, he was _here_ the whole time?”

_“I’m not exactly sure why, ma’am - I just followed the trail.”_

“I understand, thank you,” she said. “I can take the next weekend off - think you can take me to him then?”

_“This forest is kinda treacherous - you sure you want to meet him in person?”_

Vivian rolled her eyes. Bloody American.

“Yes, I’m sure - he’s my brother, and he _definitely_ won’t like you if you come alone, especially if you say you know me,” Vivian said. “Listen, it’s late - would you mind hashing out the details in a few days?”

 _“Of course, of course. Talk to you then.”_ With that, the man hung up.

Vivian slid back down the edge of her desk to plop down beside June. 

“I don’t believe it,” she said, mostly to herself.

“What? That he’s in Scotland? That he’s still _alive,_ after four years of radio silence?”

“No, no,” Vivian said. “I’d know if he died.”

“There’s no scientific evidence to support that whole ‘twins have ESP for each other’ thing,” June said.

“Whatever,” Vivian said. She shook her head, picking up her glass.

“I just... I can’t believe that I’ll _finally_ have my brother home for Christmas.”

* * *

“Hey!” Lux said, perking up as he opened his door, a basket of freshly-picked strawberries in her hand. “I was just out gathering these for the market, but they don’t usually sell too well and I probably got too many anyways - wanna eat some of ‘em with me?”

The old swordsman laughed, knowing a lost battle when he saw one.

“I’ll make us some tea.”

Luxanna sipped at her cup with delicate care - she’d dropped one earlier that month, and there was a small crack in it now.

“How are things at the farm?” He asked.

“Oh, pretty good!” The teenager replied. “The goats have been pretty restless lately, but it’s just because they’re about to start kidding soon.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Kidding?”

“Having babies,” she said plainly. “My dad says the girls always get ‘fussy’ this time of year.” She snorted out a laugh. “They’re, like... _really_ pregnant.”

“I see,” he replied, taking another sip. He had often pictured his retirement, but it had never involved learning random farm terminology from a teenage girl.

At least she was good company. And he had to admit, the strawberries were excellent.

Luxanna was looking down at the floor, a guilty expression on her face.

“Luxanna? Is something the matter?”

The girl met his eyes, embarrassed.

“No, not really,” she said. “I just... I really like having tea with you and everything, but I feel bad - I wanna ask you about what _you’re_ doing, but I also know you never really talk about your past or anything, so I dunno what to really ask about, and...” her brows furrowed at the conundrum, and she looked away again. 

He sighed. She’d been asking him, in _some_ manner or another, about the sword that he carried at his hip and displayed on his mantle, for the past six years. He might as well tell her - if nothing else, she was persistent, and she’d been about as polite as he figured she ever would be with her latest request.

Luxanna gasped as he rose to his feet, gently plucking the sheathed weapon from the mantle. With slow, careful fingers, he removed it halfway from its scabbard. Luxanna’s eyes glittered while she stared at the polished silver - he had never unsheathed it in front of her before.

“For most of my life, I was a monster hunter,” he said. Luxanna’s eyes whipped up to meet his, her jaw hanging open. “I would travel around the various towns and villages in the country - even a few cities, in certain instances. When the town guard or the citizens themselves met something that they couldn’t fight - or, usually in the cities, something they _wouldn’t_ fight - I would offer my services, slay the creature, and accept a reward.”

 _“Wow,”_ Luxanna whispered, enthralled by the frankly brief explanation. “Why’d you stop?”

“I wanted to settle down,” he said, putting down his teacup. “I hunted monsters for more then a decade. I’d get a job every other week or so, at most, but they usually paid well enough that I was able to save up a fair amount of coin over the years. I spent a few months looking for a nice village, then settled down here.”

“That’s still really cool,” Luxanna said. 

“I appreciate the compliment,” he chuckled. “As for why I carry it around, which I _know_ you’re wondering...” He met her eyes, and she looked down - he was correct. He grinned, continuing. “For the most part, it’s just a habit - though I’ve heard that sometimes wolves can attack livestock or what-have-you, so I’ve let most of the townsfolk know that I can probably drive them off if that happens.”

Luxanna just looked at him, and based on her amazed expression, she was probably imagining him doing just that.

“So, you, um... you must be _really_ good at using a sword, huh?” She asked.

He shrugged. “I did it for a long time. I like to think so.”

“Well, then, um...” she looked down again, her face red. He sighed.

“Yes, I’ll teach you,” he said reluctantly.

Luxanna’s eyes went wide as dinner plates as she looked back up at him.

“R-really? You will? Thankyouthankyouthankyou -”

He held up a hand. “But the sword is not a _toy._ It’s a deadly weapon, one which you will wield with care, grace, and respect. You probably won’t hold a real one until you’ve been training with me for multiple years. Are you _sure_ you want to learn?”

Luxanna’s head bobbed up and down so quickly he was afraid it was going to fall off.

He chuckled softly - well, he’d tried his best to dissuade her, but he should have known it would be impossible.

“All right, then. We start tomorrow.”

* * *

_“Thank you for your generosity, Hiro. We won’t let you down.”_

_The five very tall, unusually muscular men and their tailored suits walked away with an impressively large contract, and smiles on their faces._

_“So... I have a question about... all of that.”_

_Hiroshi Noya leaned back in his chair, regarding his sixteen-year-old daughter as she sat beside his desk. “What is it?”_

_“I just... this contract doesn’t seem to make sense to me.”_

_Hiroshi raised an eyebrow. “In what way?”_

_“Financially!” Vivian said. “It seems totally one-sided - we’re giving them an impressive amount of capital, and the job that we’re asking from them seems... well, pretty bloody risky, with a_ major _chance of failure. Where’s our gain, if and_ when _nothing comes of their efforts?”_

_Hiroshi’s eyes narrowed at her language, but if nothing else, it would suit her well behind closed doors in business dealings. He considered her question for a moment - perhaps it was time._

_“Well, you’re right on one account - on the books, they’re basically doing something unfeasible. Their ‘research’ will go nowhere and this will be a public loss for Noya Industries.”_

_Vivian tilted her head in confusion. “Then why do it?”_

_Hiroshi gave her a little grin. “Well, that’s because I don’t actually intend for them to try and ‘research’ anything.”_

_Vivian blinked, completely not understanding._

_“You see, Vivian, a failed research opportunity - investing in something risky, like gallium nitride transistors - is an_ excellent _way to give people a large amount of money and not let anyone get too curious about where it goes.”_

_“Are... are you giving them a gift?”_

_Hiroshi sighed. “With how much they’re charging, I might as well be - but no. You see, Vivian, sometimes, when you’re a CEO, you have to make decisions. Specifically decisions that would be a little bit... frowned upon, if they reached the public eye.”_

_“I still don’t follow.”_

_“Remember the factory that we wanted to establish in Taiwan?”_

_“Oh, I think so - we couldn’t, because it was on private land, owned by local citizens, and they didn’t want to sell it.”_

_“Yes, well...” he gestured to the door. “I’ve given those men a significant amount of money, and after they spend some time in the region, perhaps those locals will change their minds about my offer.”_

_Vivian gasped. “What... what are they going to_ do?”

_Hiroshi shrugged. “I never ask. But I imagine that it’s quite harsh, because this group is rather effective.”_

_“Father, that’s..._ wrong.”

_Hiroshi looked down at the girl, making her instantly freeze._

_“No, Vivian - it’s just business.” He stood from his chair, lazily stretching._

_“But... what prevents the things they do from coming back to the company?”_

_“Officially, those men and I are very distant business partners - and the men who will actually be persuading those little villagers will all be people I’ve never met in my life.”_

_“But it’s still the company’s money, isn’t it?”_

_“These men do a_ very _good job of making it look otherwise,” he said. “And if they ever screw up, which is frankly rare, well... then it becomes your mother’s job.”_

_Vivian sat back, completely aghast - but she knew better than to speak out against his decisions. He smiled at her._

_“Lunch?”_

* * *

Greyvalor was rather enjoying his early evening walk. He’d just spent some time painting at the nearby stream in town - his goal was to paint it at sunset, which never lasted very long, but he’d been making slow progress over the past month or so. He looked to his left as he passed by the Starsinger family farm. Quiet and peaceful, as it was most evenings.

Until he heard the unmistakable snarl of a wolf. 

Gently but quickly, he leaned his easel and paints against the family’s fencepost, leaping over the barrier and onto their property. He’d visited before, and he knew where their goats stayed overnight - the family was too poor to keep them all in a barn. For the first time in a few years, he placed a wary hand on the pommel of the sword at his hip.

Upon arriving, though, he saw that he was not the first to come to the goats’ defense - Luxanna, now around seventeen years old, was standing between the pen and the wolves, a brown leather whip in her hand.

“NO!” She shouted, cracking the cattle whip in the wolves’ direction. “Get away! These goats aren’t for you!”

The wolves appeared to have a differing opinion. 

He nearly sprang into action when one of them started running towards her, but Luxanna stood her ground - the brown leather whip _crack_ ed against the creature’s snout. Seeing that she was no ordinary threat, the four wolves began to circle the girl, snarling. He got a _little_ bit closer, just in case she ended up needing his help, but he let the girl fight her own battles for the time being - just to see how well she stood up on her own.

A wolf broke rank and lunged for her, but it took a heavy lashing to the side, yelping and retreating. Luxanna kept her cool - he even recognized the stance she was using from his own instruction.

If he was honest, Grayvalor hadn’t _really_ been training the girl - simple stances, a few pirouettes, that was it. He doubted her family would approve of their teenage daughter wielding a dangerous weapon, but the instruction had still sated her curiosity. However, the girl had apparently learned more than he was expecting her to, based on her technique. It lacked several years’ worth of polish, but it was surprisingly workable.

A wolf jumped and she pirouetted, striking its backside before it landed. Had he _really_ thrown that many rocks at her? The dodge was nearly effortless. 

Another jump, and another pirouette - she had to spin to her right side, this time, which was a struggle for a left-handed warrior. She _almost_ lost her footing, but recovered before the wolves could take advantage of it.

“Sloppy,” he muttered, “but workable.”

After a few more useless charges, the wolves snarled once more in frustration before returning to the forest, in search of easier prey. 

Luxanna’s shoulders fell down from her ears as she relaxed, wiping the sweat from her brow. She turned to check on the goats, but stopped cold when she saw him.

“Um... Master Greyvalor?” she asked.

He nodded - they’d known each others’ names for about ten years, now.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“I saw the whole thing,” he said. “I have to say, that was more impressive than I was expecting. You’re still sloppy when you turn to your right -”

“I _know,”_ Luxanna said with a frustrated groan.

“- but otherwise, nice form. I was here just in case things got bad, but you seemed just fine. Well done, kiddo.”

She gave him a bright smile, thankful. He nodded, picking himself up from where he’d leaned against the goats’ pen.

“When you come by tomorrow, we can start your _real_ training,” he said, turning to walk back to the path.

“R-really?” She said, bright-eyed.

“Yup,” he called out, over his shoulder. “Don’t be late this time!”

“You’ve got it!” Lux shouted, as he walked away. “See you tomorrow!”

As he walked away, Luxanna smiled, proud of herself. As he faded away into the distance, though, she processed his words for a second time.

“Wait a minute... whaddya mean, _real_ training???”

* * *

“Miss Noya, I don’t understand.”

“Mm, that’s a shame. I figured that my reasoning would be rather obvious.”

“Frankly, ma’am... it isn’t.”

Vivian turned in her chair, giving the massive, suited American far too steely a glare than should be possible for a twenty-two year old. “Well then, I’ll spell it out for you: I don’t like your methods. I’m making significant changes to Noya Industries, and I actually intend to _be_ reputable, instead of merely appearing that way. Thank you for the services you’ve provided this company in the past, but I will no longer have any use of them.”

The men looked between one another, their expressions ranging from confusion to concern. The tallest man, who stood in the middle, took a few steps forward, sitting in one of the freshly-installed padded chairs before her desk. 

“If I may,” he began, watching her cold silver eyes with a look of tender, almost paternal concern.

Vivian was able to tell how manufactured it was, considering that as of this month, she now _owned_ several factories. 

“You may,” she said, offering him an open hand.

“My men and I have worked for your father for more than ten years,” he said. “In fact, it seems like it was only yesterday when you were sitting in a little chair...” he gestured to an empty space beside her, “... listening to your father talk with us. You must have been... what, fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” Vivian said, her voice flat and inexpressive.

“Sixteen,” he capitulated. He leaned back in the chair - out of habit, he nearly rested a foot on the elegant carving on the front of her desk, but a _poisonous_ glare made him instead put the loafer-clad foot on the floor. “Miss Noya... no, _Vivian.”_

“I prefer ‘Miss Noya,’ thank you.”

“Fine. I... I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been to lose both of your parents in the same night.”

“I appreciate your concern,” she said, about as sincere as a magician’s card trick.

“But... if I may give you some friendly advice... I believe that you might be moving a _bit_ too quickly, since acquiring the company.”

“It’s a fast-moving industry, is it not?”

He sighed at her belligerence when it came to understanding his meaning - at this point, he had at least a reasonable understanding that she wasn’t doing it by accident.

“Listen.” He said, his voice losing all of the fake, parental concern that it had previously held. Vivian’s eyes finally showed a bit of life, twinkling as he removed his professional mask, but he pressed forward. “You might think you’re hot shit now, kid - you got to just waltz into this company, and you think that just ‘cuz your daddy sat in that chair, you can do it too.”

Vivian smiled, gesturing to her relaxed sitting posture. “I’m doing it now, aren’t I? It’s a rather comfortable chair.”

The man stood up with rage, slamming his fist on her desk. She didn’t even blink as he knocked over a jar of ballpoint pens that she kept there. “All right, kid - you wanna get smart with me? Fine.” He leaned over her desk, boring his eyes into her, as if testing her resolve.

He flinched, after noticing that she hadn’t. But he pressed on nonetheless.

“Running a company ain’t _easy,_ little girl. It ain’t _clean_ either - more often than not, you’ve gotta get dirty to get on top. If you think you can just do without my guys and our services, then fine - but don’t come crying back when you need us.”

He turned around, shaking his head.

“Your dad did good business, kid - I’d hate to see a little brat like you run it into the ground.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But hey - I’m sure that your competitors pay pretty well.” He turned back over his shoulder, giving her a sneer. “I might give them a discount on their first job against your company - just to wipe that smug grin off your pretty little face.”

Vivian stood, the first time her posture had changed in the entire conversation. “I’m not my father, and I don’t care what you think. Unless you have any more male posturing or pathetic displays of bravado for me, you can get the hell out of my office.” 

The man scoffed, and his associates all filed out the door. He turned to do the same, stopping just outside her threshold.

“Y’know, when I first met you, I never thought you’d be such an arrogant little bitch.”

Vivian walked around her desk, meeting his gaze, despite the fact that he was nearly a foot taller than she was.

“Well then, perhaps you didn’t _really_ meet me in the first place.”

The door slammed shut.

* * *

“Excellent form,” he said, effortlessly dodging the strike.

Luxanna panted. It was one thing to be demonstrably outclassed by her swordmaster - that was the nature of their skill levels, and she understood that. It _was_ an honor to learn from him, too - the sheer amount of knowledge he had about this particular skill was honestly breathtaking.

“Still too slow,” he said, wiping away the end of her whip with his silver sword before it would have struck him in the chest. “If you’re _going_ to use a light, high-mobility weapon, you’d better be fast enough to support it.”

But she _could_ do without the running commentary.

“Are you still wearing the ankle weights?” He asked, flicking his head to the side as her whip cracked into the air a few inches to the left of his ear. “You were supposed to take them off.”

“I’m just -” her whip once again struck empty air, easily sidestepped “- tired,” she said, growling in frustration.

“If you’re tired, then why are you talking?”

“Because!” She shouted. “You keep - _oof!”_ While he was dodging her strikes, he’d been subtly closing the distance each time. Once he’d gotten close enough, he’d suddenly ducked under and swept out her feet, making her land flat on her back. 

The swordmaster leaned over her prone form, his own weapon resting on his shoulder. He offered her a hand up, which she took begrudgingly.

“You’re not doing _terribly,_ per se,” he said, as she toweled off her sweat-soaked face. She picked up one of the waterskins he’d left on the little stool at the side of the soft dirt arena they’d set up in his back yard, and dunked around a quarter of its contents down her face before beginning to drink. “It’s just your speed that needs work.”

“I know,” she said, continuing to drink.

He chuckled. “I mean, if an old man like _me_ can dodge your strikes...”

“Don’t rub it in,” she replied. She plopped down in the dirt, giving her still-pounding heart the chance to settle. He sat down next to her on the stool - he had claimed that sitting on the ground directly was bad for his back, but she suspected he just didn’t want to get dirt on his pants.

“I meant it when I said you had excellent form,” he said. 

She let out a tiny laugh. “Then why can’t I hit you?”

“Because I’ve been doing this since before you were born, and I’ve fought monsters that move twice as fast as any human ever could.”

Lux gave a small shrug of acknowledgement - that seemed like a fair reason.

“What’s the most powerful thing you’ve ever fought?”

He leaned back, considering her question as they watched the sun set.

“Hmmm, tough one,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s the ‘most powerful’ thing - I would say a pair of werewolves, but I had this,” he gestured to the ornate silver sword in his lap, “so it was easier for me than it would be for another hunter.”

Luxanna just hummed at that.

“The hardest fight, though? _That’s_ an easy one.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“About... oh, ten years ago now, just before I retired, I fought a basilisk.”

“What’s that?”

“Big blue scaly thing, lots of red spines - eight legs in total.”

“Like a spider?”

“Kinda, but the legs were all in a line instead of spread out, plus it had a tail. Oh, and it was about...” he reached his hand out, maybe five feet above the ground. “... _that_ tall.”

“Oh. Tougher then a spider.”

“Yeah.”

“So what was hard about it?”

“Well, the scales were kinda thick - my sword just slid off the thing unless I hit it at _just_ the right angle. But by far the hardest part was having to fight it with my eyes closed.”

Luxanna perked up. “Wait, why?”

“Haven’t I told you about these? Basilisks can petrify you, if you look at them too long.”

“Oh. Well, what does that mean?”

“Means you turn to stone.”

Her eyes bugged out. “Wait, _seriously?”_

He laughed at her reaction. “Yup. I didn’t even know what it looked like until I had killed it.”

Lux shook her head in disbelief. “That’s... that’s _totally cheating!”_

“Sorry to tell you - monsters rarely play fair.”

He clapped his hands against his knees, standing. He offered her a hand. “C’mon - one more before dinner?”

* * *

“Are you _sure_ you’re going to wear that?” She asked.

If Hanta could properly look her in the eyes, he would. “What? _You_ bought me this shirt, Viv.”

“At your request, yes,” she said. “But... it’s the only clothing you wear.”

“Yeah, it’s comfy and you don’t hate it so much that you annoy me about it,” he said. “That’s pretty much all I care about.”

Vivian sighed.

“What is it?” he asked flatly, out of obligation.

“Well, I just... if you’re wearing it _tomorrow,_ then...”

Hanta froze. “Vivian, if you try to make me take nice pictures on Christmas Day, I’ll be on the next ferry back to Scotland before you can get your camera out.”

“Oh come off it, you _know_ I’d never do that,” Vivian said. “Who am I, Mum?”

He chuckled. “I hope not.”

She laughed along. “No, no, it’s not that, I just...”

Hanta raised an eyebrow.

“If you wear that tomorrow, you’re going to open your present and it will be three five-packs of the _exact_ same tank top that you’re wearing,” she said, reluctant to spoil his gift. 

“That sounds funny, let’s do it,” he said.

He heard her book fall down into her lap - she must be glaring at him, now.

“You’re insufferable, you know.”

“Good to see you again, too, Sis.”

Their hostile atmosphere lasted less than half a second before the pair burst into laughter. 

“Ah,” Vivian sighed, wiping away a bit of a tear. “I really did miss you.”

He smiled. “You too. I have to say - I don’t hate the new place.”

“Mm, bit of an upgrade over your abandoned shack?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go _that_ far,” he joked.

They both chuckled and went back to reading by the fireplace - Vivian with a paperback, Hanta with a device that allowed him to read longer works in braille. It periodically changed the characters it displayed, raising and lowering a series of mechanical pegs as necessary.

Just then, the glass doors leading to the terrace exploded.

* * *

Luxanna drew in a breath, then exhaled. She’d arrived at her master’s house fully armored, her whip coiled up at her hip. He stood in the backyard, sword in hand, his back turned away from her. 

Today, Luxanna Starsinger had turned twenty-two. She and her master had been seriously training for almost four years, and today, he had told her to come prepared for a full-on, no-holds-barred duel.

She stepped into the arena, daring not to get too close to her motionless instructor. For the briefest instant, she wondered if she should call out to him, but he beat her to it.

“Are you sufficiently prepared?”

Lux took another deep breath. “Yes.”

“Then show me what you have learned.”

Like lighting, he whirled, charging straight for her. 

Luxanna’s body was in constant motion, her whip haloing her as she made strike after strike. Her master was dodging or deflecting every single one, but her relentless assault was keeping him at bay for the moment.

“Using your superior range to keep your opponent out,” he said. “Excellent use of your weapon’s strengths.”

Lux ignored the praise, unable to focus on anything but the combat. Her heart stopped as he allowed her whip to wrap around the blade of his sword. Without warning, he grabbed it with his bare hand and pulled, nearly yanking her off her feet. She stumbled forward, only to narrowly duck under the strike that he made to connect with her momentum. She slid along the ground, turning the awkward movement into a backwards roll, ending up mostly on her feet.

“Good work - it’s no small feat to adapt to such an unorthodox attack.”

Lux swung her whip once more, aiming for his head. He ducked as the whip snapped into the air above him. She made two normal attacks, then went for another, similar head strike, which was ducked again. Two more strikes, and then she wound up for a third head strike - except _this_ time, she suddenly grasped her whip in both hands, swinging it down overhead like a greatsword.

Sure enough, her master ducked, but the whip flew downwards in an arc instead of cracking into the air at a specific point - he grimaced as he brought his sword up to deflect the strike, the first facial expression he had shown thus far.

“Conditioning your opponent, and then capitalizing on their reaction,” he said approvingly. _“Very_ clever.” He leapt to his feet, thrusting straight towards her - Lux pirouetted to the left, sending her whip towards him as he passed her. She very nearly lashed into his back, but he held his blade out over his shoulder, somehow covering the _precise_ area that her whip was about to strike, deflecting the blow with his thin weapon.

“Capitalizing on a missed strike - close, but not enough.”

Lux growled, aiming for his legs, but he simply leapt over her weapon.

“You’re using a rope-like weapon - of _course_ you would go for my ankles,” he chided. “You’ll have to be smarter than that.”

She swung directly forwards, causing him to parry her whip - she’d noticed that he parried her head-on attacks upwards, killing the momentum from her strike and forcing her to wind up again. However, the move made him slightly vulnerable for a moment, as he had to shove his blade overhead to do it. Instead of resetting after his parry, she allowed her whip to _keep_ flying upwards, hitting the peak of its arc and swinging down towards her. She angled her body to the side, allowing the end of the whip to fly past her, and spun, carrying the momentum into an underhanded, behind-the-back swing.

Her master’s eyes widened, and for the very first time in their bout thus far, the whip _crack_ ed into his ribcage.

 _“Very_ nice,” he said.

Luxanna swung over and over again, constantly shifting her momentum as they battled. He completely refused to allow her to coil her whip back up after her swings, forcing her to carry the momentum of each strike back around into the next one. She flowed like water, forcing him to use almost all of his impeccable dexterity to block and avoid her whip.

“You can’t keep me out forever!” He called. “You’re quick, but you have to slip up eventually!”

“You first,” she shot back, swinging once more. He knocked horizontal strikes from either side away with relative ease, and overhead strikes usually required too much commitment - he would just shove them down to either side, making her whip hit the ground.

That left only one option.

When her whip once again swung back towards her, Luxanna rooted her feet, rotating her arm backwards instead of swinging down overhead - as a result, her whip flew _upwards_ from the ground, a very awkward angle for her opponent to block. The whip bounced off his sword once, twice...

The third strike landed dead in the center of his chest.

Luxanna nearly whooped with joy, but he didn’t give her much time to celebrate, swinging his blade into the side of her armor - the strike rang her metallic custom plate like a bell. The underhand strike worked brilliantly, but she’d had to coil her whip back up afterwards, which gave him enough time to get close to her. She ducked to the side, trying to roll off of him - his blade cut a line in the dirt just _inches_ from her head. If her hair had been any longer, he would have taken some of it off with that swing. While she was down, she tried to sweep his leg out from under him, but his stance was too solid, her boot just crashing into his ankle and staying there. 

His sword came down towards her face once more, and she rolled to the side. Instead of removing his blade from the dirt, he simply swiped it towards her while it was still embedded, sending a cloud of dust towards her face. Lux sat up, coughing, but he gave her little time. Now on the defensive, she scrambled to her feet, desperately dodging his attacks. She didn’t have _nearly_ enough room to wind up her whip.

 _“Now_ what, Luxanna?” He asked. “I’ve broken through your defenses - how do you respond?”

She ducked and twisted her body out of the way of his various strikes. Twice more, he hit her, but fortunately, her armor deadened most of the impact each time. She kept dodging, waiting for her opportunity, until... _there!_

He stabbed the blade towards her head, and she jerked it to the side, bringing her whip up at the same instant. Her left hand was still on the handle, but the right held onto the cord itself, around five inches from the base. She flipped the section in her right hand over the blade, wrapping it around his sword. When the whip had made one full rotation, she caught the cord in her left hand, making a small loop around the blade. Using this leverage, she pulled his sword down and to the left, creating space for herself.

Then she jabbed him in the face.

He stumbled back, hand on his nose - the punch had been with her off-hand, and she was training with weapons, not in tavern fighting, but it was _just_ enough to send him off-balance. She leapt back, swinging her whip towards the dead center of his chest.

The whip screamed against steel as he shoved it aside, laughing as he wiped a bit of blood from his nose.

“I’m glad that my teachings haven’t made your fighting style _too_ refined,” he chuckled.

They resumed their usual dance, with Lux’s relentless attacks being effortlessly parried and dodged. Lux couldn’t keep this up for much longer - her shoulders were _screaming._ They’d been fighting for what felt like hours, now.

Instead of passively trying to keep him away, Lux actively pressed forwards, closing in on him. His eyes widened with recognition as he understood that she was approaching, but he didn’t seem to understand why. Every few steps she took, Lux took an extra few seconds to let her whip wrap once around her arm, intentionally shortening it to keep the sharp tip the appropriate length away. When they were finally almost adjacent, he took advantage of her closeness, swinging in a downwards arc, right at her shoulder.

Lux brought up an armored forearm, _praying_ that her idea wasn’t about to blow up in her face.

She pushed his sword off of her, and struck out with the whip in her other hand.

He wavered, recovering from the blow, but she pressed her advantage. She whirled, turning the momentum into a backwards kick.

Her swordmaster fell, landing on his back. 

She ran forwards, trying to strike him while he’d fallen, but his foot reached out and pulled for her ankle, tripping her - she landed on her butt. She fumbled for a brief instant, bringing her arms up to ready a strike.

He sat up as well, sword in hand, and they found themselves at a stalemate - his sword was pointed at her chest, but in the time it would take him to lean forward, she’d have a clean shot with her whip, directly at his forehead.

They stared each other down for a moment, wondering who would make the first move. 

After almost thirty seconds of motionless silence, the pair broke into laughter.

“Very, _very_ well done, Luxanna,” he said, panting.

“Wait, what’s that?” She asked aloud. “Are you... are you out of breath? Finally?”

He laughed. “Yes,” he admitted. “Excellent work - you have finally made me start breathing hard.”

Lux fell onto her back in exhausted triumph. She stared up at the clear blue sky, pumping one fist into the air before letting it bonelessly flop back down onto the ground.

“Best birthday ever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much for reading this incredibly self-indulgent thing! I hope the premise is interesting, as well as the characters! I've written out a lot of this in advance, so more is coming quite soon. But until then, I have some very amazing people to thank!
> 
> -My DM, Jacob, aka Psyntax, who obviously influences everything and created this amazing world concept completely on his own, as well as providing a significant amount of inspiration for Luxanna's backstory! June Gallagher was a character I created, but because she's an NPC, he plays her and has major influence over her personality.
> 
> -My sibling, Sidney (https://violahcello.tumblr.com/), who plays Hanta Noya, and had a significant amount of influence over his shared backstory with Vivian! They also let me bounce ideas for Lux's backstory off of them, and gave me some incredible ideas for her, too. 
> 
> That's all for now! If anyone ever reads this and enjoys it, hey, thanks! I *really* adore the writing I've done here, and I hope that some readers will do the same! Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> -R


	2. Magic

“Luxanna, stay inside.”

“No. I’m coming with you - there’s _way_ too many of them for you to fight by yourself!”

He sighed. They did _not_ have time for this discussion. “Luxanna, I promise that I am being honest when I say this. You are not ready to fight this battle, and your presence on the battlefield will make me too concerned for your safety. I won’t be able to focus, and that’ll get us _both_ killed - not to mention the townsfolk.”

“What, so you’re saying I’m just... a... a...”

“A liability - yes. You are. I’m sorry, but it really is as simple as that.” He pushed the door open, hand on the hilt of his sword. In the distance, he could already see them, riding horses and carrying torches. The hobgoblin raiding party was approaching fast, and he was the only person there who could fend them off. He took one last look at Luxanna.

“Stay here.”

The young woman didn’t say anything - she just gave him a slow, frustrated nod.

With that, the door closed, and he walked outside to meet the raiders. 

  
  


* * *

“Who the hell are you and what the hell do you want?”

“Calm down, Ms. Noya,” said the woman said from across the solid steel table - she appeared to be far chattier than the blond man sitting next to her. From their accents, Vivian could tell that they were _American_ \- or at least, not from the UK, which just added another layer of confusion to the whole thing. What were a pair of probably-Americans doing in the north of London, and why had they kidnapped her out of her flat on _Christmas Eve?_

“Hard to be calm when you’ve got me in a bloody _interrogation room,”_ Vivian spat. “Whatever it is you want, you’re much more likely to get it from me - leave my brother out of it.”

“Actually, it’s him we’re interested in,” the blond man grunted. “You just happened to be in the room.”

Vivian looked at him like he’d started speaking in tongues.

“Sorry?” She asked, genuinely confused. “My brother has spent the last four years so far off the grid that it took me _six months_ to find him, and he wasn’t even trying to hide from me. He has no outstanding debts, no money to his name, and I don’t think he’s made a single human being genuinely angry in his entire life.” Her eyes narrowed as she regarded the pair more closely, guessing at their motives. “He means everything to me, but he couldn’t possibly mean anything to _you.”_

“Oh, but on the contrary,” the woman said. “Your brother has absolutely _remarkable_ vision - he might just be one of a kind.”

Vivian stared daggers directly into the woman’s soul.

“Is that some kind of sick fucking _joke?”_ she said, visibly seething. “Hanta is _blind._ He has been our whole lives. What the bloody hell are you on about, you ableist bitch?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed at her harsh use of language, but Vivian stared right back, unfazed. 

“It’s true that he’s blind,” she said calmly, standing up to walk around the tiny, mirrored room. “And yet, he can still see. With impeccable detail, actually - his range appears to be limited, but what he _can_ detect is incredible. We rolled a die on the floor behind him and he told us what was on it.”

Vivian blinked at the idea of her brother apparently _cooperating_ with these lunatics, but she summoned a reply anyways. “He’s always been a bit lucky - how do you know it wasn’t a guess?”

“The die had twenty sides and he ‘guessed’ its number correctly thirty-seven times in a row,” the woman said evenly. 

Vivian just stared at her blankly. “Oh, I get it - you’re both completely bonkers.”

The man leaned forward at that, staring directly into Vivian’s cool silver eyes.

“What would you say if I were to tell you that magic is real?” He said, his voice perfectly calm and rational.

“I’d tell you that you’re far too obsessed with a mediocre book series written by a transphobic old crone,” Vivian spat back.

He rolled his eyes. “We’re not getting anywhere. Just show her, Kit.”

The woman - Kit, apparently - sat back down at the table, closing her eyes. To Vivian’s utter astonishment, a _phantom_ _hand_ appeared in the air between them, cut off at the wrist. It looked as though it were made of semi-transparent orange energy. It wiggled its fingers around when the woman opened her eyes again.

Vivian didn’t have a snide remark this time - she was just too astonished.

“What the _fuck_ is that?”

* * *

He parried another axe, the massive creature grunting as he slid underneath the attack, slicing open its side as he passed by. A halberd swung at him from horseback, but he pirouetted, swinging his blade at another foe. Metal screamed against metal as the blade struck the creature’s helmet, but it seemed unbothered, kicking him in the shin. The leg gave out for a moment and he just rolled into it, narrowly avoiding the creature’s axe as it split the dirt where he had just been standing. He popped up to his feet, preparing a horizontal strike while his opponent’s weapon was down - but the massive hobgoblin just punched him in the stomach, hard enough to stop him in his tracks. The one on horseback was circling around, preparing for another swing.

Only two left. He could do this - he’d already killed or severely wounded ten of them - what was two more? 

The standing hobgoblin pulled his axe out of the ground, and he brought his sword up, just _barely_ managing to push the brutal strike away, letting it glance off his armored shoulder instead of his unprotected head. 

“That... that all you got?” he asked, the pause he took to gasp for air betraying his tiredness. He had no idea if the creature understood Common, but judging by its amused snort, that was apparently the case. 

He parried a few more strikes, dodging two more horseback charges from the other hobgoblin. He was frankly grateful that it didn’t just jump off the horse and attack him on foot - the halberd might be a bit awkward to use on the ground, especially for one accustomed to mounted combat, but he was _definitely_ too exhausted to fight back against more than the occasional swing.

At this point, his only instinct was survival - he was so tired that any attack would leave him open enough that he’d get an axe in the head before he could recover from it. His _only_ chance was landing a single, fatal blow, ideally right after the horseman attacked, so he’d have the best possible chance of returning to his stance and _hopefully_ taking the thing out before its next pass killed him.

He saw the opportunity - he ducked a horizontal swing, and put every ounce of his remaining strength into a thrust for the creature’s torso.

His heart fell as the strike bounced uselessly off of its plated armor - only a few inches too far from the center. 

The hobgoblin sneered at him, down on one knee - the essentially immobile stance was necessary to make a strike from such a low position, and he hadn’t really intended on missing. He closed his eyes as the massive, unyielding creature lifted its axe.

The air whistled, and the hobgoblin stopped. The two of them looked up at his weapon simultaneously, both equally surprised to find a brown leather cord wrapped around it, preventing him from swinging down.

He looked over his shoulder to find a blond woman holding onto a leather whip, her normally bright and passionate blue eyes filled with concentration.

Greyvalor realized that the mounted warrior should be coming back soon - but, to his astonishment, all he could find was a riderless horse, calmly grazing several hundred feet away from them. 

Luxanna squared her jaw, resolute.

“Get _away_ from him!”

  
  


* * *

_“This,”_ the redheaded woman said, gesturing to her floating, conjured hand, “is magic. It’s called a Mage Hand - go ahead, touch it.”

“No thanks,” Vivian managed.

“You can drop the act whenever, you know,” the man said, his voice almost bored. 

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re a hell of an actress, I’ll give you that, but we know about the books you’ve been reading. If we hadn’t found you, you would’ve discovered this yourself.” He leaned forward, once again meeting her silver eyes. “So are you gonna keep pretending, or can we _actually_ talk?”

Vivian sat back in her chair, crossing her arms. To her surprise, they hadn’t handcuffed her, but she was definitely locked in the room with them.

“Well, well. You lot have certainly done your homework.”

“As have you,” Kit said, letting her Mage Hand disappear. The moment she did, she winced, as if she’d just gotten a small headache. Grunting, she reached into her coat and pulled out a bottle of Aspirin, swallowing a tablet dry. Vivian grimaced - she hoped that that didn’t happen to _all_ magic-users.

“So if you know more about this than I do, what was I doing wrong?” Vivian asked, admittedly curious to speak to the apparent _actual_ magic users. She hadn’t even been sure if it was possible, if she was being honest - it’s something that she’d accidentally come across, working out a new prototype. She’d generated a sizeable jolt of electricity from her fingertips in her lab one day, despite being nowhere near a conductor and with nothing _close_ to the conditions for that much static electricity. A small rabbit hole of internet research later, she’d stumbled upon what claimed to be _genuine_ books of magic, and had gone from there. She’d never quite made the same spark again, but figured she _might_ be able to eventually.

“You were going about it the wrong way,” the woman said. “You were treating magic like math - which works, for some, but we don’t think that’ll be the case for you.”

“What do you mean?” She asked, now fully invested.

“You can’t just assemble a spell like a circuit board,” the man said. “I may not be a practitioner, but even _I_ know it takes a bit more than just some engineering skill.”

“I’m a _computer scientist,_ thank you,” Vivian said, with irritation. “I’m not just some engineer. I went to bloody _Oxford_ -”

“With a double major in Business Administration and Computer Science, summa cum laude, yes, yes,” Kit said, waving her hand. “But Miles, you’re only half right. Magic _can_ work like that. Vivian, here, is different.”

“Different how?” Vivian asked. “From what _I_ understand, any arsehole can theoretically do this if they manage to figure it out. It’s just that it’s _really_ _bloody difficult_ to figure out.”

Kit’s eyes fell upon her, as if she were looking through Vivian’s very soul.

“Hiroshi Noya descended from a long line of clock-makers, did he not?”

Vivian was briefly shocked at her correct guess, but her face soon contorted in anger. “Read my whole family history, have you?” She narrowed her eyes. “Tell me, what’s the percentage chance that Gramps’ risk of heart failure has expressed itself in my genes?”

“We do our best to stay informed,” the man - Miles - answered. He shrugged. “But the stuff about your dad is just on Wikipedia.”

“Great,” she muttered. “Love being bloody famous.” She looked Kit in the eyes again. “Yeah, my father’s father was a clockmaker. So was his father, and his father, et cetera. When Dad inherited the family fortune, he built a tech company back in Japan, then brought it over to the UK when the market took a turn. He tried to keep the Japan branch open, but it didn’t make financial sense. A few years passed, he met my mum here in London, they got married, presumably he fucked her, they had a pair of twins, then died twenty-two years later in a car accident. So what?”

 _“So,”_ Kit said, grimacing at Vivian’s unnecessary use of detail, “We think that there might be a bit more in your blood than just your penchant for machinery.”

Vivian raised an eyebrow. “You mean magic can be bloody _genetic?”_

“For some,” Kit said. “Others find a patron, deity, or something of the sort. But you, well...” she shrugged. “At first, we were only interested in Hanta, but now that you’re both here, we think there might be something magical in your bloodline. Perhaps it was expressed more openly, long ago, but magic in general faded out from our world over the last millennium. Now that it’s on its way back, well...” 

Miles gave a grunt. “We think you might be a sorcerer.”

“Right.” Vivian said. “A bloody sorcerer. Why not? I’d _love_ another handout from dead old Dad.”

Neither of the other occupants in the room wanted to touch that statement.

“Fine.” Vivian said. “Say I’m a sorcerer. Which, by the way... can I at least be a sorcer _ess?”_

Miles looked to Kit for confirmation. She just shrugged.

“Great,” Vivian said. “Okay, say I’m a bloody sorceress. How does my magic _work,_ then?”

“Honestly, you’re really the only one who can know the answer to that,” Kit said. “If you’re able to access that sort of power, it’s inherent to you - your body, your blood, your very _soul._ Nobody else can teach you how to do it. All we can really tell you is to try.”

“You lot are really helpful, you know that?”

“Hey, you’re the one with magic in your blood,” Miles said.

Vivian rolled her eyes. “So... what? I just... try it? Now?”

Kit nodded, watching intently.

Vivian closed her eyes, concentrating. If she was honest, she had absolutely no idea what she should be concentrating _on,_ but she did it anyways. The only real memory that she had was creating that spark in her lab, so she tried to go from there. Despite Kit’s claims that she’d been going about it the wrong way, Vivian couldn’t help her mind’s desire to take an analytical path. She thought of electricity, of power currents. She meticulously analyzed the tiniest details of how the simple action would occur - the negatively-charged electrons repelling one another but still being forced down a predetermined path. Her hand wasn’t a _great_ conductor, she knew, not like copper or gold, but... maybe that part could be abstracted. She _willed_ the laws of physics to bend for her, just a little. She imagined the flesh on her fingertips gathering electrons (ignoring the fact that matter couldn’t be created or destroyed) and forced them _out,_ into the air.

“Shit!” Miles cried out, recoiling from the metal surface of the table as his arm seized up.

Vivian’s eyes snapped open in frustration at his outburst, but then... her fingertips were smoking a little bit. She looked up at Miles - he was holding his hand at the wrist, shaking it numbly. It was almost as if...

As if he’d been shocked.

“Well, there you have it,” Kit said, showing a rare smile. “Congratulations, Miss Noya - you’re a sorceress.”

She looked from Miles to Kit, and then back again.

“So now what?” She asked.

“Now, we offer you a job,” Miles said.

“I have a job. It’s quite time-intensive.”

“We know.” Kit said. “But if you want to take some time off from that job, we have an opening for you, where we could really use some of your newfound talents.”

Vivian just raised an eyebrow.

“Magic is returning to our world, Ms. Noya, and to be honest, we’re not ready for it. There’s _tons_ of ways that power like this can and will be misused as more and more people discover it, and for some, the mere knowledge of magic can be seriously dangerous - even life-threatening. Our enemies are numerous, like the thugs who broke into your apartment -”

“I believe _you_ broke into my apartment,” Vivian countered. 

“Only because the Templars were there first,” Miles grunted.

“The who?”

“We’ll explain later.” Kit interrupted. “For now, we’ve got an impossible task before us, and our Organization is remarkably understaffed. We could really use your help, so... what do you say?”

Vivian met her eyes.

“I’d like to see my brother now.”

  
  


* * *

“So... remind me what this thing is called?” Luxanna asked as they made their way through the forest.

“Cobble demon,” Grayvalor replied, adjusting his swordbelt. “There’s something weird about this one, though - apparently, it can shoot fire.”

“Huh, interesting,” Lux said. “That’s why they sent us, then, huh?”

“Yup. It’s a living.”

“Mm,” Luxanna hummed. “You know, when you told me all those cool stories from your monster hunting days, I figured it’d be a bit more... glamorous.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is tracking a deadly being constructed of demonic rocks and apparently fire _boring_ to you?” He asked with a chuckle. 

“Well, the _tracking_ part is, kinda,” she admitted with a shrug. “The forest is beautiful this time of year, though, so I don’t really mind.”

“And yet, hunting for meals while we travel never seems to bother you.”

“Yeah, but that’s because I can hit any old deer and bring it back! With this, we have to track a _really specific_ thing. It’s been like three days, and we’re still looking!”

“Patience, my young apprentice,” the older man said, his voice taking on a jovial tone of wisdom. “The monster slayer must be able to track his prey for days - _weeks,_ if need be - in order to locate it.”

“I haven’t been your ‘apprentice’ in like a year,” Lux retorted, playfully bumping her armored shoulder into his own. “And even then, I could still kick your butt.”

“I doubt that sincerely,” he said. “But even if you could, you still need me for my impeccable hunting skills.”

Luxanna raised an eyebrow - _she_ was the one who had found the last signs of their quarry around six hours ago. They’d been following that trail ever since.

“Fine,” he admitted. “But at least I make good conversation.”

“You’ve got me there,” Lux said with a laugh. She suddenly held out a hand, stopping him. “Wait. See that?”

“The little patch of scorched ground there, to the southwest?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s take a look, shall we?”

Luxanna knelt before the blackened soil, pondering it. It was clear that there had been a fire, a recent one - plus, it was _way_ too large a scorch mark to be a campfire mishap. It was honestly lucky that the whole forest hadn’t caught fire, though maybe the rain that’d fallen that morning had doused it before it had a chance to spread to the nearby trees.

“Looks recent,” her companion remarked.

“Very,” Lux agreed. Looking away from the soil, she noticed that the scorch mark wasn’t totally solid - an absolutely tiny section of it, around ten feet away from where she was kneeling, was miraculously unharmed. A miniscule patch of green in the sea of blackened earth. It was just enough room for a small white flower to grow, the lone survivor of the flames.

Without really thinking, Luxanna stood, walked over to the flower, and gently picked it. She brushed her bangs out of her eyes, carefully inserting the stem through her golden locks until it sat relatively securely above her left ear. She turned to her companion.

“Whaddya think?” She asked with a smirk.

The aging swordsman looked the girl over. The white hibiscus flower complimented her deep blue eyes quite well, as if the local florist had given it to her as a final accessory to her outfit. For a moment, he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him, but Luxanna seemed to _glow_ in a way he hadn’t really noticed before - haloed by the light of the midafternoon sun, its gentle rays of warmth bouncing effortlessly off of the blue steel of her custom-made breastplate. Or were the rays coming from Lux in the first place?

“Looks great, actually,” he said. The nearly supernatural light seemed to fade, the perfect little moment that he was _surely_ just imagining now gone as the woman before him returned to normal, everyday Luxanna. The glow seemed to remain, ever so slightly - as if it had just become a piece of her, now, a miniscule presence inside the woman’s soul.

Or, maybe he was just getting on in years and Luxanna was no longer the hyperactive girl who had routinely made excuses to try and get a look at his sword.

“Did you do something new with your hair?” He joked. “Looks like it’s catching the sunlight a bit more these days.”

Lux just shrugged. “Nah, not really. I guess I haven’t cut it in a while, huh?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s probably just that.”

He regarded his travelling companion as she took the lead once more, following just a step behind her. _When did she get so tall?_ he wondered, noticing that Luxanna was nearly up to his chin. She’d grown in other ways, too - the slim, wiry seventeen-year-old girl who he had finally agreed to train for _real_ was replaced with this muscular, toned twenty-four-year-old warrior woman.

“Somethin’ on your mind?” Luxanna asked, over her shoulder.

“Nothing,” he said. “I just... since when did you get so _big?”_

“Oh, do you mean, ‘since when did you get really tall and stronger than me?’” She asked, with a cheeky smile.

“I don’t recall ever learning that you were stronger than me,” he said slowly. “I’m getting old, sure, but I’m pretty confident I could still beat you in an arm-wrestle.”

“That doesn’t count - I’m a lefty,” she said. She put her hand to her chin, pondering. “Although... even with that disadvantage, I might still have a shot.” She shot him a grin. “Next time we find a tavern?”

“You’re on,” he said with a laugh. 

Luxanna giggled and kept walking. He just shook his head at the sky.

Since when did kids grow up this fast?

* * *

_“HANTA!”_ Vivian shouted. She ran down the concrete hallway, purposefully making her steps loud so that he’d hear her coming.

He turned, opening his arms as she crashed into him.

“Jesus bloody Christ, Han - are you okay? Did they hurt you, did they do anything - I swear to _god_ I will -”

“Viv,” Hanta said, squeezing her close. “I’m good. I’m okay.”

She just nodded, still holding him.

“And, judging by the fact that you appear to have thrown a world-class fit, I assume that they didn’t hurt _you,_ either.”

“Not as such,” Vivian admitted. She managed a little grin. “I did hurt one of them, though.”

The beginnings of a wicked little grin appeared on his face. “Oh? Pray tell.”

Vivian snorted out a little laugh at the absurdity of their current scenario. “Well, _apparently,_ our father descends from a long line of fucking _sorcerers_ -”

He let out a low whistle. “Wait, seriously?”

“Yes - it’s allegedly where the clockmaker genes come from.”

“Well... _shit.”_

“Quite. So, I think to myself, ‘why the fuck not? This might as well happen,’ and I held my hand out, concentrated, and a bit of genuine fucking _lightning_ came out of my hand.”

“Damn. Did you zap one of ‘em?”

“The guy, yeah. In my defense, he shouldn’t have been holding onto a metal table.”

He just laughed at her.

“So, how about you?” She asked. “They told me you can, um... ‘see,’ but in a weird way.”

“That’s... honestly not a bad descriptor,” he admitted. “So, they walk in there, they tell me _you_ were cooperating -”

“Bloody liars,” Vivian laughed.

“Yeah, I said that. But anyways, they’re telling me all about this magic shit or whatever, and Lady Whatsherface says I can see. She rolls a die on the floor and asks me what number’s on it.”

“Okay, and what did you say?”

“I laugh and I say ‘fourteen.’”

Vivian chuckled.

“And then she says I’m _right.”_

“... damn.”

“Apparently, they were using a twenty-sided die, the fuckers. So the lady keeps rolling - I'm convinced she's just fucking with me - but when I start to focus, I can _see_ the numbers on the die, the individual ridges. The more I did it, I started to get, like... focus, on the room, all of that. It doesn’t go super far, they used a tape measure and it’s only 30 feet, like... _exactly.”_

“Still, though...” Vivian said, amazed. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I... I’m still coming to terms with it.”

Vivian, still not fully believing it, just slowly picked up her hand and began to wave it back and forth as slowly as she could.

Hanta sighed. “Even without this, I could still hear you doing that.”

“Sorry,” she said, letting her hand fall. “I just...”

“Yeah,” he said. “Trust me, I get it.”

They shared a silence for a little while.

“So,” he said, a grin forming on his face. “You can't even escape dad's hereditary bullshit with this, huh?”

Vivian gave him a _poisonous_ glare. “Oh, piss off.”

  
  


* * *

He cracked a grin as he watched her pirouette away from a massive, stony arm.

“Excellent form!” He called, slicing his blade up the creature’s spine.

“Really? We’re still doing that? Right now?”

“It’s never a bad time to focus on your training!”

“Of course,” Lux said, her brown leather whip striking the creature in the face with a resounding _crack._

“On your left!” He called.

“I see it,” she sighed, hopping away as the creature slammed both arms into the ground. She fell back momentarily, but righted herself.

The creature reeled back, frustrated with the pair - or at least, that’s what she assumed. Its stone-covered face wasn’t _exactly_ expressive. It leaned forward, opening its stony maw to exhale a burning cone of fire, and they split apart, both rolling off to the side to avoid the flames.

“Huh. So it really _can_ breathe fire,” he said, getting to his feet. “Something new every day.”

“More like every two weeks,” Lux said with a smile.

“Hey now - _you_ wanted to do this. I was perfectly happy painting back home.”

“Yeah, right, and you spent years training me for free because you _weren’t_ dying of boredom.”

Luxanna’s whip smacked the creature in the chest - it stumbled, and Greyvalor took the chance to drag his sword across its leg, making a series of stones fly off of the creature as he injured it.

Angry and desperate, the creature whirled - Luxanna _barely_ managed to duck a horizontal swipe, falling back into a sitting position. When she looked up, the creature had both of its arms raised above its head - from the sheer weight of its body, the blow would probably be fatal.

From out of nowhere, Greyvalor appeared in front of her prone form, his sword above his head. 

The creature swung downwards, snapping the blade in half.

He crumpled.

_“NO!”_ Luxanna screamed, as her master fell into a near-lifeless heap. The creature picked up its wounded leg, threatening to crush his prone form.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she muttered. Luxanna rolled back to a standing position, lashing out with her weapon. Before the creature could bring its foot down, the corded leather whip struck its chest with a sharp _crack,_ knocking it off-balance. Luxanna struck again, this time right in its forehead, making it tumble backwards - for a moment, she could have _sworn_ that her weapon was glowing. 

She rushed to his side, but the creature was already standing back up before she could check on him. Instead, she turned, facing down the monstrous pile of rocks.

Luxanna would never describe herself as an overly serious person. She found that there was far too much light and laughter in the world for someone to try and be stoic all the time. Whenever the two of them came across other adventurers, either in a town or on the job, they were often that way - serious, brooding, always quiet, as if they couldn’t let themselves relax or even smile. She’d never understood it.

However, just because she enjoyed the softer, simpler things in life - picking flowers, cracking jokes, telling made-up stories by the fire - it didn’t mean that she couldn’t be serious when she needed to. 

Now was one of those times.

Luxanna’s whip _crack_ ed into the air, threateningly. She took up a stance, protective of her fallen companion. She stared the demon straight in the face, as if her glare alone could make it crumble to pieces.

The creature charged anyways, and Luxanna’s arm lifted into the air. 

_Crack._ A large stone fell off of the demon, briefly halting its progress before it could start running again.

 _Crack._ Two stones, this time - the creature was turned partway around from the force of the swing.

_Crack._

_Crack._

_Crack._

The creature was stumbling now, set off-balance by her relentless strikes. Luxanna didn’t even realize that she was advancing, but she was - forcing the creature back with each swing.

As she recovered from her follow-through, the creature leaned back, ready to exhale fire from its stony maw.

Luxanna didn’t think, she just jumped - directly over the cone of fire that _immolated_ the ground where she had been standing. She landed with grace, her whip nearly splitting the creature’s stony mouth in half for its trouble.

 _Crack._ She took another step forward.

 _Crack._ The ache in her muscles began to lift, somehow - she had no time to question it.

 _Crack._ Her arms began to thrum with energy, as if there was something else powering her strikes.

_Crack._

_Crack._

_Crack._

Her whip began to glow with a burning white light.

The cobble demon, now mostly sludge, fell to one knee. Its body was _surrounded_ by rocks that were missing from its form - had _Luxanna_ knocked them all away?

It swung at her desperately, but she dodged back from the strike. One more _crack_ brought the creature to both knees, near defeat.

Luxanna had never taken pleasure in ending a life, even that of the horrible creatures she had to slay to protect the innocent. This demon had nearly burned down a village, and _worse,_ it had mortally wounded the man who had traveled and trained with her for eleven years of her life. Luxanna almost saw him like a second father, and right now, he was probably as close to death as this creature was.

With one final, brutal swing, her whip once again glowing with a burning white radiance that she had neither the time nor the patience to question, she made certain that the demon was the one who found death first.

“Are you okay?”

“What does it - ugh - look like?” he coughed, trying not to notice the flecks of red on his hand as he pulled it away from his mouth.

“Shut up,” Lux muttered, smiling through her tears. “You’re gonna be okay, I promise - it looks bad, but you’ll pull through. I have some bandages in my pack, I’ll be righ-”

“Don’t bother,” he said, grabbing her wrist to stop her. Or to anchor himself, she couldn’t tell. “I... I think this is it, for me.”

“No,” she said, the tears running down her cheeks. “Not here. Not yet.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said, coughing again. “You didn’t need me for that. Not really. You’ve grown so much - you can do this on your own.” He turned his head after another cough, managing to meet her eyes. “It’ll be all right. You don’t need me anymore, Lux.”

“I don’t _care!”_ She wailed, clutching tightly to his armor. It was useless now - the creature’s strike on his shoulders had bent it so far out of shape that it wouldn’t protect him from anything. Worse, his torso had been bent along with it.

“Lux, please -”

“No!” She said, unbuckling his breastplate. “I’m not just gonna let you die! I don’t care if you want to go, or if you think I don’t need you - _I want you here!”_

“Lux,” he coughed again. “I... I’m sorry. I don’t think you get to make that choice.”

“Stop talking,” she said gently, pulling the front of his armor off to reveal the sickeningly mangled flesh underneath. “Save your energy,” Luxanna advised. “Just hold on, okay?”

He looked up at her - her face was covered in dirt, sweat, and tears, blurred by her constant motion as she hurried to use the cloth of his shirt to stop the bleeding. She pulled a dagger from her belt, cutting away what remained of his armor, letting the old leather fall off him to get a better look at the wound. She stopped over something for a moment, now using a spare cloth to apply pressure. He looked up at her deep blue eyes, noticing something.

“You still have that flower in your hair,” he said, almost delirious. “You’ve become such a brave, strong, beautiful young woman. I...” he trailed off, into a coughing fit. “I’m... I’m so _proud_ of you, Luxanna.”

He let his eyes slip closed.

“NO!” She shouted. “No, no no no! Stop that, you jerk - you don’t get to leave after saying something like that!” 

Luxanna was chanting the names of every single god she knew, just running through them like a mantra under her breath. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, don’t go yet.” She looked up at the clear blue sky, as if someone upstairs was listening. “Please, just... let me save him.”

And as if to answer, the flower in her hair began to glow. 

A radiant warmth flowed down her body, her arms, into her hands. It was similar to the light that had covered her weapon while she fought the demon, as if Luxanna’s own fiery spirit were manifesting a physical presence - but the warmth was softer, kinder, somehow. If the burning radiance from earlier was an uncontrolled inferno, this energy was a campfire. A soft, pleasant flame, meant to nurture.

To heal.

Luxanna’s eyes went wide as her hands took on an aura of soft, golden radiance. The warmth flowed down her arms and into her fallen friend - before her very eyes, his flesh began to knit back together, his bones reattaching in the places they had broken.

The energy in her hands was about to give out before he shot up, spluttering and coughing.

“Holy _shit,”_ he managed, his breaths shaky and uncertain, but definitely alive. He met her eyes. “L-Luxanna?”

“Welcome back,” she said, a fresh set of tears rolling down her face.

He looked at her as if she was an angel - for all that either of them knew, she very well might have been. 

“Am I dead?” He asked plainly.

“I don’t think so,” she chuckled, the warmth in her hands finally giving out. She looked down at his chest. It wasn’t perfect, wasn’t close - but it would do.

He would survive.

“I’m inclined to agree,” he said, gently flopping back down onto the grass. “Being dead can’t _possibly_ hurt this much.”

They shared a quiet laugh, at the absurdity of it all.

“So, uh... when did you learn you can do _that?”_ he asked.

“Just now,” she said, sitting beside him to watch the clouds gently travel past. “I felt the a similar thing when I was hitting that demon - it made my whip glow. That’s new, too.”

“Oh, so it’s dead?” He asked, as if he’d forgotten about it.

“Yeah,” she said, jerking a thumb over to the slowly decaying mound of ooze and rocks about thirty feet beside them. He had to crane his neck in order to see it.

“Good,” he said, settling back down. “That’s good.”

Lux just hummed, thoughtful. “Do... do _you_ know what all that was?” She asked. “I mean... I’ve never really met someone who does magic, but... that _has_ to be magic, right?”

“Think so,” he said. “I’m not certain - I’ve never done magic before.”

“Me neither,” she laughed. She thought for another moment. “When I was little, a wandering cleric came by my town - my mom gave him a few copper pieces because he had healed a few of our neighbors from a disease. Do you think I’m one of those?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I mean... you don’t really worship a god or anything, do you?”

Lux recalled cycling through the names of every deity she’d heard of while trying to save him. She didn’t really feel much of an attachment to any of them, and certainly not to one in particular.

“Nope,” she said. “Never been much for worship.”

“Oh!” he said, trying to sit up and getting a coughing fit for his troubles. “Remember that woman we met, three towns ago? She could heal with her bare hands, just like you did. I remember asking when we saw her in the tavern - she called herself a ‘paladin.’ Maybe that’s what you are.”

“A _paladin,”_ she whispered, trying on the word. She smiled, flopping down on her back in the grass.

“I like the sound of that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Credit once again goes to the amazing Psyntax, my DM, for creating the original non-player characters Kit and Miles, as well as inspiring the whole "interview about magic being real" conversation. That was actually RP'd live in our Session Zero, nearly two years ago, and I recreated it as best I could from memory. The creature that Lux and Greyvalor fight is also a "cobble demon," which is one of his original creations - though I added the fire breath, for the sake of Lux's one flower that mysteriously survived the flames.
> 
> Also credit again to Sidney, who made some adjustments to Hanta's section to keep him in-character.
> 
> That's all for now! Hope you enjoyed!!!
> 
> -R


	3. Adventure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight trigger warning: There are a large number of dead bodies in this chapter. Please proceed with caution and remember to take care of yourself.
> 
> -R

“So... this is a different reality?” David asked.

“That’s how we understand it, yes,” Vivian said over her shoulder, leading the group down to the beach. 

“But it  _ looks _ like we’re still in Hawaii,” the librarian protested, pushing up his glasses.

“It does, buuuuut a bunch of creepy tentacle monsters come out of the ocean at night and try to kill you,” chirped Sienna, the merry sixteen-year-old girl trotting along with a monstrous greatsword strapped to her back.

“I see,” David replied, fascinated. He concentrated for a moment, then opened his eyes wide. “I... I can  _ feel _ the magic here. It’s like Egypt, but... different, somehow.”

“In Egypt, that little tomb we were in, or whatever,” Vivian said, now reaching the shoreline and sitting cross-legged in the sand, “seemed to have  _ sealed _ magic inside itself, preventing it from leaking out into our world. Here, though, magic is just... around. It’s everywhere, from what I can tell.” She closed her eyes and began muttering to herself, casting a spell that everyone besides David had seen before.

“Does anyone  _ live _ here?” He asked. “When you were here last, did you meet anything sentient?”

“Once,” Hanta murmured darkly. He sat beside his sister, his pale grey eyes resting on the horizon, listening to the gentle waves as they crashed within the very edge of his supernatural blindsense.

“We had to kill her,” Sienna said, her voice a little low. She put a hand on the sword at her back - it had belonged to that woman they’d fought. All that remained of the dying immortal was that sword and the mysterious Eye in Hanta’s backpack.

“‘Had?’” The academic inquired. He’d seen his fair share of violence, certainly - they’d fought animated statues and even a cube made of condensed mana and slime with him in Egypt the week prior. But he  _ did _ try to avoid it with creatures that had the capacity for thought.

“She sorta... begged us?” said Woody, their second-tallest companion besides David, a remarkably average-looking human boy with a backpack that he never took off.

“Still put up a bloody fight, though,” Vivian said.

“Not like that lich we fought, then?” David said. The decaying undead presence had let them end his life - he’d lacked the strength to do it himself.

“Nope. She bisected me,” Woody said mildly.

David looked at him with an expression of abject fear.

“Oh, whoops,” Sienna said, as if Woody had just committed a minor party foul.

“Might as well tell him,” Vivian said, looking over her shoulder as she made arcane gestures in the air. “He’s been with us a little while now.”

“All right,” Woody said with a shrug. Halfway through the gesture, his body froze completely, as if he were a character in a TV show that someone had just paused. His massive backpack began to slowly unzip itself, and out popped a tiny, wooden creature, roughly humanoid and about three feet tall. “This is just my robot body,” the creature said in Woody’s voice, gently rapping his wooden knuckles against the apparently metallic shell. “My dad made it for me - he’s getting mad that I keep breaking it.”

“Your... your  _ dad?” _ The ruffled academic stuttered.

“Miles, the blond guy at the Organization,” Sienna supplied.

“I... I see,” David replied, straightening his formal collar, his ever-so-slightly pointed ears peeking out from his grey hair until he smoothed out his clothing.

“I  _ think _ that’s all our secrets,” Vivian said mildly. David looked at her.

“How can you talk and cast at the same time?” He asked. He had a fair share of rituals that he could perform, but they all required intense focus and silence. Vivian, however, was apparently able to join in on the conversation while around halfway through what he could only gather was a summoning spell.

“I’ve been travelling with  _ these _ lot for two months,” she said simply. “Do you  _ really _ think they could all stay quiet for ten minutes?”

“Harsh, but fair,” Hanta joked - he was the only one of their group who had lived in the literal woods for months and could go weeks without speaking a single word.

“You’ll get there pretty soon,” Vivian assured David.

“As she was saying, I think we’ve got one more secret,” Sienna said, looking over to Hanta.

“Fine,” he murmured. “That woman we met was a ‘Watcher,’ and she... guarded over this place. She was carrying this Eye, of a god named Kessva - it’s one of seven.”

Sienna reached into her pocket, removing a small compass with seven needles on it, all pointing in various directions - one of them aimed directly at Hanta.

“You’ve just been walking around with a _god’s_ _eye_ in your _pocket_ this whole time?” David asked.

“We never said it was a good idea,” Vivian chuckled.

"She asked me to be a Watcher. To a form a bond for some sort of exchange... I mean, take a man out to dinner first." Hanta chuckled, the tiniest flicker of worry in his voice. "I dunno. I think I just wanna talk with Kessva at some point," he said, as if the mysterious luck goddess of dubious intentions that they accidentally introducted to the existence of their home world was an acquaintance he wanted to get to know better. "She said I'd have to sacrifice my sight, but..." he looked at David, waving a hand in front of his own face. "That price is already paid, I guess."

“It’s a funny little loophole,” Vivian agreed. 

David just stood there for a moment, flabbergasted.

“The things I do for research,” he muttered darkly.

“Oh, yes?” Vivian taunted. “Remind me where you got your magic from?”

David shot her a look, but her eyes were closed as she finished up her summoning spell. He had told her about that in  _ private _ \- they had shared a watch as the others slept.

He sighed, resentful. Apparently they were past secrets.

“I made contact with an otherworldly entity whose powers and goals are completely unknown to me, and made a deal with it,” he admitted.

“Like a magic sugar daddy?” Sienna asked instantly.

“Please never say those words in that order again,” Woody replied, now back inside his robot body.

The air in front of Vivian began to shimmer, just above the water. David shielded his eyes - he found it  _ very _ difficult to see with all this sunlight - before a sizeable divot formed in the waves, accommodating the spectral wakeboarding boat that suddenly appeared in the water, fully geared-up and ready for travel. Wordlessly, the others began wading into the water, ready to hop aboard.

“Here, I’ve got it,” David said. He thumbed through one of the two leather-bound tomes that he kept holstered under his arms before he found the passage he was looking for, and he began to gesture. The water around the conjured boat began to ebb and flow, gently coaxing it towards the shore, until it was beached. He hopped into the bow without having to get his feet wet, and Vivian followed soon after. Once they were all aboard, he repeated the gesture until the boat was far enough out from shore that Vivian could start the motor without fear of clogging it with sand. 

With the roar of a modern-day combustion engine, they were off to explore another world.

* * *

“Are you  _ sure _ you’re gonna be able to make the rest of the journey yourself?” Lux asked softly.

“I’m old, not  _ dead,” _ Greyvalor replied gruffly, tapping his new cane (a thick tree branch that they had found) against the dirt. He was looking much better - a week of daily healing sessions had restored much of his youthful glow, but at this point, it seemed that Luxanna’s magic was trying to combat age more than physical injury, and the former was much more stubborn.

“We could still buy you a horse,” she said, for the third time that day.

“Lux,  _ you _ earned that coin,” he insisted. “You should be the one who decides how to spend it.”

“And I keep telling you, I  _ want  _ to buy a horse so you can ride it back to town safely.”

“You’re really leaning into this whole ‘hometown hero’ thing, huh?”

“If I admit that, will you take the horse?”

The two burst into laughter. When their eyes met once more, he had a soft smile on his face as he regarded his former student - now already so grown up. 

“Tell you what,” he said. He reached into the coin purse she was offering him, and he spent a moment counting out around half the silver pieces before pocketing them, and giving Lux the bag. “I’ll hire a  _ carriage _ to take me back to the village. That’ll be cheaper than buying a horse, so the rest of the money can go towards your first several nights at an inn. Sound fair?”

“Deal,” Lux said with a smile, shaking his hand. 

“And you’re  _ sure _ you’ll be fine on your own?”

Her eyebrows raised. “I thought you said I was the one who did all the heavy lifting with that cobble demon.”

“For the most part, yeah,” he admitted. “I more meant... it won’t be too lonely, will it?”

Her eyes glazed over for a second, considering that, before she shook it off. 

“It’ll be okay,” she said. She gave him a little look. “Besides, this way I’ll be able to hear myself think without your constant complaining.” She began an overdone impression of him, holding herself in pretend agony. “‘My feet,’ ‘my back,’ ‘my hip...’”

“Yeah, tell me how you really feel,” he said with a roll of his eyes. He put a hand on her shoulder, wincing a bit as his injury protested. “Just... be safe, okay?”

“I will,” she said with a smile. “See you around.” He nodded, starting to turn, but before he could get very far, Luxanna had suddenly surged forward, almost knocking him off his feet with a hug.

His arms hovered in the air for a moment, surprised. With a soft smile, he gingerly rested his hands on the back of her breastplate, ignoring the slight pain it caused him for her sake.

“See you around, kiddo.”

* * *

Vivian clung tightly to the wooden “feathers” of the conjured owl as it flew through the sky.

The five of them were flying up above one of the islands they’d been exploring in this strange, magical world that had still yet to show any real signs of sentient life. While spending the previous evening in an abandoned castle they’d discovered, the group had been attacked once again by the monstrous tentacle creatures from the sea. Based on the fact that they had laid siege to the previously-unharmed castle, it seemed that they mindlessly pursued sentient life anywhere that it could be found after nightfall. They disappeared by sunrise, but that appeared to be the _only_ thing that could stop their unyielding assaults.  
She wondered if that was why they hadn’t met any people yet.

“Hey, I think I see something!”

Vivian’s stomach lurched as Woody’s conjured giant owl swooped down towards the ground. It  _ was _ convenient, considering that they could all travel much faster and more directly than they could on the ground, but one of the smaller problems with it is that  _ he _ controlled them all, so Vivian, Hanta, David, and Sienna were mostly left hanging on for dear life.

The wooden owl’s wingbeats creaked loudly as it approached the ground. Vivian finally opened her eyes and understood what Woody had spotted - they’d landed just outside a village.

A  _ village. _

A village that was currently on fire.

“Shit,” Hanta said, still woozy from the journey - he  _ hated _ flying.

“The creatures came here too,” David said, pointing to a heap of tentacled corpse in the shade of a tree.

“Think anyone’s still alive?” Sienna asked, drawing her sword.

“Wouldn’t they have put the fires out?” Woody countered.

“I’ll check for survivors,” Vivian said, already running.

Hanta and David combined their biological and arcane knowledge, respectively, as they examined the creature. Woody stayed with them, and Sienna took the other half of the village. Upon a fair amount of calling and searching, though...

“They’re... they’re  _ all _ dead...” Sienna hugged her arms to her chest, heartbroken.

“Same here,” Vivian replied. She ran a hand through her sweat-dampened hair. “Bloody hell - just when I  _ finally _ think there’s actual people here...”

Sienna just nodded, too upset to vocalize anything.

Hanta and David found out that the creatures’ skin actually  _ burned _ in the sunlight, which explained their absence during the day. Also, they appeared to be covered in some kind of horrid, viscous liquid that corrupted living flesh - one of Woody’s sticks had instantly become diseased and twisted just from a touch. That also explained the sickly blue pallor of all the corpses they’d found.

“I think we should burn these bodies,” David said, standing up from examining a corpse. “It seems unwise to wonder what happens to them after nightfall.”

“I don’t like it, but I was going to say the same thing,” Hanta said, his arms tightly crossed. “We probably don’t have time to pay them proper respects, but the least we can do is make sure they don’t come back as zombies.” He shook his head, exhaling. “They’d be a biohazard anyways...”

“Let me know if you need me to start the fire,” Vivian said, with a slow nod.

“I can do it,” David said. The statement wasn’t meant to comfort - he was always cold and practical around corpses. To him, a dead thing was dead, simple as that. It had no capacity for sentience and was therefore just an object, to be dissected or burned as necessary.

“Right,” Vivian replied. “Well... I guess we can start pulling them out of houses, too...”

She went back through the houses, getting accurate counts of the remaining bodies. Vivian had no capacity to move them beyond her hands, and considering that Hanta had advised everyone to avoid touching them with any bare skin, that seemed like a poor choice. 

Then she heard the whining.

“Hello, there,” Vivian said, her voice soft, bordering on reverent. She extended a hand. “It’s all right - I’m not here to hurt you.”

A mangy brown dog, maybe three or four years old, cautiously picked its head up from the corpse it had been softly nudging with its nose. It met her warm silver eyes, assessing the potential threat. Vivian just patiently crouched down, her hand still extended. Behind her back, she made a soft, nearly imperceptible arcane gesture, hoping that her brother could sense the lightning running over her hand, and would enter quietly.  
The dog edged forward, and Vivian dismissed the sparks on her hand. She held them both out, moving slowly, showing that she meant no harm.

After an entire, silent minute, the creature finally pushed its nose into her palm.

_ “There _ you are, sweetie,” she said, her voice still barely above a whisper as she began lightly scratching behind its ears. “It’s okay. I’m here now, I promise that things will be all right. I’m going to take you home with me, and we’ll get you all cleaned up and fed properly, and you are going to feel  _ so _ much better...”

Hanta did eventually find her, and true to his nature, he entered softly. He opened the door of the house to see Vivian sitting there with her back against the wall, whispering sweet nothings into the ear of a malnourished, exhausted-looking dog that rested in her lap. The dog still perked up at his approach, though Vivian quickly ran her fingers along its back to soothe it.

“Shhh, it’s all right,” she cooed. “Don’t worry, he won’t hurt you. He’s my brother, and if I remember correctly, he has some of our food.” She met his eyes - hers were filled with unshed tears. “Do you have some meat or something?”

“Think so,” Hanta whispered. He approached slowly, pulling out some dried jerky once he knelt before them. The dog cautiously sniffed at it, then almost politely pulled the strip of meat from his hand, happily munching on it. Once that was done, it gave Hanta’s hand a grateful lick.

“Here’s the rest of what I got,” he said, giving her a few more strips, still in their wrappers. “I’m gonna check on the rest of the house.”

“All right,” Vivian said softly, still gently petting the dog. “I’d help, but I don’t want to leave her...”

“I get it,” Hanta said. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon.”

The moment he began to push open the door, Hanta felt the extra weight leaning against it. He slowed, guiding it ajar, until the two corpses on the other side slumped forwards enough to let it open. He choked back a gag at the stench that was released when he did. He leaned back a bit, tilting his head to listen for Vivian’s soft whispering. She was still distracted with the dog, and he let himself have a faint sigh of relief.

She wouldn’t have to watch what he was about to do.

He swooped in to examine - his face tightened with a blend of focus and sadness that he’d been wearing for a significant amount of the day so far when he was able to closely inspect the pair. They were a man and a young girl who had died in his arms, likely the husband and daughter of the man in the other room. Unlike him, these two didn’t seem to exhibit the same festering slash marks as observed on the majority of the bodies outside, but rather died of something more akin to an infection. He could “see” the same magical traces mirroring disease and necrosis on these as he had on the others, which he gravely noted had some... foreboding implications. He found himself once again grateful that he’d warned his companions to avoid contacting flesh with their bare skin.

His morbid work complete, Hanta gently closed their eyes with his gloved hands, guiding them back to a more respectful, seated position like the one he’d found them in. It didn’t feel like enough. He knew that they had to be cremated for the safety of the living, and he  _ was  _ certainly going to assure that that was done respectfully, but setting them back up would have to do for now. He murmured soft condolences over the pair, and then got up to leave.

About ten minutes later, Hanta was standing in the doorway. Vivian hadn’t moved from her spot, still gently comforting the dog. Judging by the pace of its breathing, it had finally fallen asleep. 

She didn’t look up when she spoke to him.

“Han?”

“Mm?”

“I really hate this fucking place.”

Hanta paused, letting out the tiniest, most imperceptible sigh.

“Yeah.”

* * *

Luxanna peered at the town’s message board, sifting through the posters. Someone was looking for a business partner... an announcement about a festival the next month... ah-ha!

“You’re  _ actually _ gonna go for that one?” Said the elvish woman beside her, with a massive greataxe across the back of her heavy plate armor.

“Of course! If someone needs my help, then I’ll help them,” Lux said, resolute.

The elf woman looked her up and down. “Boy, you must be green.”

Luxanna looked down at herself. She had a blue steel breastplate, ivory skin, tough brown boots, golden hair...

“I don’t follow.”

“Just an expression, kid. Try not to get yourself killed.” The elf woman walked off, rejoining her two companions - a blue-skinned woman with horns and a tail thumbing through a spellbook, and a tall half-orc in dark robes who was sharpening a dagger.

Luxanna shook her head at the odd interaction. She’d fought cobble demons before - surely a ‘shale demon’ wouldn’t be all that different.

* * *

Vivian closed the door behind her with her foot, her hands full with the two grocery bags she had just brought home. She walked through the short parlor of her flat, placing her bags down on the kitchen island. Instinctively, she reached for the lightswitch, but she stopped upon remembering that it was already in the ‘on’ position, as, for once, another person was living in the cozy, luxurious top-floor suite.

She unzipped her coat, a smile easily finding its way to her lips as Sienna sat in the middle of her polished wooden living-room floor, pulling on a thick rope toy that was caught in the jaws of Vivian’s new dog, Hope.

She and Sienna were a day and a half into their very first “break” since joining up with the mysterious Organization that they had both been working for over the past two months. In that time, they’d found a portal to another world in Hawaii, busted up a magical drug-trafficking ring in Chicago (Hanta had sampled their products while undercover, so his hair now permanently grew in a bright pink), gotten a fifth companion in the form of David, travelled to Egypt and opened a vault containing a significant amount of magical energy that had been sealed away before magic had vanished from their world for several centuries, and last but not least, returned to the portal in Hawaii to find a village completely destroyed by horrible aberrations from the sea, with its only survivor being a mangy brown dog.

That dog was now eagerly pulling back against the young Sienna, who was clearly not using all or even most of her strength, considering that she could probably bench-press Vivian’s entire body with relative ease. She had left her greatsword in Vivian’s guest suite, and they’d given Hope a bath the previous night, so despite Sienna’s supernatural abilities and Hope’s tragic origins... for the moment, Sienna looked like any other carefree sixteen-year-old girl, and Hope looked like any other happy, healthy dog.

Vivian just quietly watched them for a while, feeling a strange warmth in her chest that she didn’t recognize. She blinked in surprise and wiped her eyes - oddly, they were just a tiny bit wet.

It was no secret to their companions that the Noya family’s dynamic had been...  _ strained, _ even at the best of times. Hanta’s physical blindness had made their parents metaphorically blind to his needs and even his existence for long stretches of time, and their father’s intense focus on grooming Vivian to be the perfect CEO from the time she could talk had given them both their fair share of complexes with lengthy, scientific names. Before the dirt over their parents’ graves had even settled, they’d both gone off to deal with their own little traumas - for Hanta, it had been a journey of self-discovery through the south of Asia and eventually several other parts of the world, during which he’d worked as a biologist in a laboratory in Shanghai, built himself a cabin in the Scottish highlands, and befriended a cat that was blind, like he was. For Vivian, she had spent her time behind her father’s massive oaken desk rooting out and cutting away the branches of the company that he had established for less-than-reputable purposes, and pushed the non-environmentally-conscious production lines and factories to be more ethical and sustainable. She’d even hired the social worker who had taught Hanta braille to head a design team specifically concerned with making their products as accessible and user-friendly as possible.

As a result of the  _ numerous _ ways that their upbringing had left lasting marks on their psyche, neither of the Noya twins thought they were the kind of person who should reproduce. 

Now, though, watching her normally posh, businesslike flat be filled with the laughter of a teenage girl and the happy yipping of a dog, Vivian couldn’t help but feel  _ warm _ as she looked upon the pair. This tiny sliver of a normal, domestic fantasy made her wonder if it was something that she wanted in her life. There were still  _ so _ many things to do - a company to run, a different world to explore, a shadowy group that worked against them and an equally shadowy group that worked  _ with _ them to properly investigate...

And yet, for the very first time in her life...

Vivian Noya wanted to be a  _ mother. _

Not soon. Not until a  _ lot _ of things were taken care of.

But... someday.

Someday for certain.

* * *

“Okay,” Luxanna muttered aloud, ducking under the creature’s massive arm. “Maybe they’re a  _ bit _ different from cobble demons.”

The stone wall of the abandoned tower around her let out a violent lurching sound as she narrowly dodged punch a from the monstrously large shale demon. The blow knocked a hole in the wall behind her that was powerful enough to make the whole structure shake. She dove between the creature’s legs - this was the  _ only _ upside to fighting an opponent three times her size - and uncoiled her whip again. A brutal  _ crack _ sounded in the air as the weapon, momentarily infused with Luxanna’s divine radiance, drew an angry white trail in the stones along the creature’s back. 

She leapt back, gauging the damage that the creature had taken from her blow - she was coming to understand that the brilliant white light she could infuse her whip with was painful to anyone, but it  _ really _ hurt demons and the undead.

No one seemed to have told the massive shale demon that, though, as it shook off her divine strike like a mild case of fleas.

_ Wham! _ The creature’s fists crunched into the ground, sending out a shockwave that would have been strong enough to knock her off her feet if she hadn’t jumped over it. She landed on uneven footing, though, which didn’t give her  _ quite _ enough time to prevent the giant, sludge-covered fist from knocking her off her feet and sending her flying into the opposite wall.

“Ouch,” she managed, coughing as she felt the creature’s poisonous sludge begin to enter her bloodstream. The foul, viscous substance almost immediately clogged up her veins, making her arms feel twice as heavy. With a grunt, Luxanna made it to her feet. Touching her hand to her own breastplate, she closed her eyes with a wince as divine light briefly washed over her, eradicating the foul poison instantly. Feeling lighter already, Luxanna rolled out of the way of yet another massive fist. Another one aimed for her head - with the tiniest bit of reluctance at burning through her resources so quickly, Luxanna disappeared into mist, returning to her original shape about thirty feet behind the demon.

She brought her whip up once more, making another two strikes along the creature’s back. They weren’t infused with her divine energy - she didn’t want to run out - but as a result, the creature was barely irritated. It charged her, making her drop all pretense of normal combat and sprint out of the way. The demon couldn’t turn in time, making another sizeable hole in the wall.

“If it breaks the wall like that again, this whole place is coming down,” Lux muttered. She looked up at the ceiling, where an iron chandelier hung from the rugged stone above. It was suspended at an angle, dipped towards the most damaged wall. 

“Wait a minute...” she said. The demon rudely didn’t obey, forcing her to use  _ another _ teleportation spell to avoid being crushed. The creature had tried to just fall on her, and was now getting up.

“Okay, big guy,” Lux said, staring the creature down, with a weak wall behind her. “Gimmie your best shot.”

* * *

“Bastion doesn’t exactly get visitors very often,” the dwarf said, stroking his beard, careful not to pull on the iron bands that were braided into it. “Who  _ are  _ you people, anyway?”

They certainly didn’t dress like anyone he’d ever seen. They didn’t even dress like they all came from the same place - there was the absurdly tall professor-looking guy who seemed like he was on his way to a formal gathering, the short-ish girl with a  _ huge _ sword and a weird blue cloak that stopped at her waist and had baggy sleeves, the tallish woman with sleek black pants and a coat made from some  _ very _ finely-treated leather, the inexplicably pink-haired man beside her with an odd, sleeveless tunic, and then the boy with surprisingly form-fitting and unremarkable garments in colors that were odd to see around here, plus his huge backpack.

“We’re...  _ explorers,” _ Vivian said, pulling on her trusty CEO experience to lie to the stout man. “Tell me - you said this town was called ‘Bastion?’ What about the islands in general - are they named?”

“You mean The Descent?” He asked, narrowing his eyes at them.

_ “The Descent,” _ David repeated, scribbling a note into the cartography software on his tablet computer. “I see.”

“So why’re some of the buildings on fire?” Sienna asked.

“Creatures came again last night,” the dwarf said. “Anyone they kill comes back the next night, so...” he shrugged. “Best way to take care of the bodies.”

The five of them exchanged looks.

“We’ve... had some experience, there,” Hanta said darkly.

“Oh, really?” The man asked. “Are you all fighters?” His eyes flicked to the sword at Sienna’s back, and the strange black metal things that Hanta had at either hip, where a weapon would normally be kept.

“We are,” Vivian said.

“Makes sense,” the man muttered. “Dunno how you’d survive out on the open ocean at night if you weren’t.”

_ “Right,” _ Vivian said. She was playing the part of someone from far away, and definitely  _ not _ someone who had travelled here through a portal from another plane of existence that just so happened to be an hour and a half away by boat. She looked back to the rest of them. “Are you all willing to stay a night?”

They spent a moment checking in with one another, but their consensus was clear.

“All right, then,” the man said with an approving nod. “Feel free to go to the bar, if you need some food - when you’re ready, meet us at the guildhall.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We’ve been running low on fighters, these days...”

* * *

_ WHAM! _ The demon’s massive body crashed into the wall once more, sending another mass of loose stone tumbling out from the tower and into the grass outside.

“Come  _ on,” _ Lux panted, as the sixth blow to the structure was still somehow not enough to bring it down completely. “How many hits can that thing  _ take?” _

As if to punish her for asking, the shale demon’s massive arm slapped her aside like a ragdoll, knocking her out onto the grass. Its poisonous sludge took over her body again, but another use of her healing magic banished the poison once more. She couldn’t do that too many more times - plus the actual damage of the creature’s heavy swings  _ seriously _ hurt. 

“There’s gotta be a way to speed this up,” she said as the creature turned back towards her, its rocky head scraping loudly against the iron chandelier as it lumbered across the circular chamber.

Wait a minute. The chandelier!

Luxanna jumped to her feet, running directly towards the creature. It swung a massive arm towards her again, but she slid underneath it, popping to her feet and whipping out its knee, momentarily making it stumble. She raced up its back, ignoring the poisonous sludge that  _ immediately _ seeped into her skin as soon as she touched the creature’s body with her bare hands. Pushing off its back, she jumped into the air, catching onto either side of the chandelier, her whip haphazardly gathered up in her left hand.

“Oh, come on,” Lux said, dismayed that her weight wasn’t enough to pull the ceiling down. “There’s gotta be a - oh.” She  _ immediately _ let her fingers slip out from the chandelier as the shale demon aimed a gigantic uppercut directly at where her body used to be - punching a sizeable hole in the ceiling. Lux hit the ground and ran, knowing that the blow would finally topple the structure. She dove through one of the massive holes in the wall just in time.

Sure enough, the moment that the shale demon removed its rocky fist, the ceiling began to tumble down on top of it. Confused, the creature held up its arms, trying to support the structure above it. Lux stood up, panting - she coughed up a bit of disgusting green liquid into the grass.

_ Right. The poison. _

Lux’s hands covered her in white light yet again, removing the creature’s sickening sludge from her body once more. She coughed again, coiled up her whip, and walked over to where the creature was standing, essentially pinned by the tower it was now supporting with its shoulders. 

“Here,” Lux said, gesturing to its heavy burden. “Let me help you with that.”

Her whip unfurled, and while infused with the last ounce of her divine energy, it  _ crack _ ed the creature across the knee, sending a few of the stones in its body flying off. The creature’s leg immediately gave out, sending the entire structure tumbling down around it. Lux shielded her eyes as an enormous cloud of grey stone dust kicked up into the air.

When it finally settled, the creature’s thick, ooze-like blood was gently trickling out from all sides of the tower, the massive demon squashed like a bug.

Firmly exhausted, Luxanna plopped down onto her butt in the grass, just staring at her handiwork.

“Yup,” Lux said with a laugh. “Definitely tougher than a cobble demon.”

* * *

“The town has two major choke points,” the white-skinned lizard woman explained, stabbing her knife into the map laid out before them. “Normally, we split ourselves between the two, but with Hazar hurt and the rest of our better warriors dead, there’s just me, Raderrick, and the pikemen - that’s enough for one choke point, maybe.”

As she finished talking, David gently leaned over the table, removing the knife from the yellowing parchment. He placed his fingers on the small tear that it had created, and they glowed as the fibers knit themselves back together, good as new.

He got some looks from their hosts, but he valued the structural integrity of a good map more than the potential embarrassment from a few odd stares.

“My team and I can cover the second choke point,” Vivian said confidently. She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder at her companions - as the smoothest talker, she’d always found herself in a bit more of a leader-like role, but she’d never called them ‘her team’ before. To her surprise, there was no protest. 

“What about that tower we saw on our way in?” Sienna asked. 

“Seemed like a solid vantage point,” Hanta said. He’d taken a lap or so around the town, since paper maps were basically useless to him. “Maybe David and I could head up there? With your magic and my guns...” 

David nodded. “I can call out the targets that’re too far for you to see.”

“I think it’s better if I go with them, too,” Woody said. “I can just fly out on one of my owls or something if things get bad.”

“All right, so the boys get the tower,” Vivian said. She looked to her hoodie-wearing companion. “Wanna stay at the other choke with me? I can toss lightning from pretty far back, so...”

She nodded. “I’ll try and keep them off you.”

“Wait, so... just the two of you?” Hanta asked, concerned. “Viv, you’re not exactly a close-range fighter.”

“I won’t have to be,” she said with a smirk. “There’s something new I’ve been working on. I think this’ll be a perfect situation for it. Plus, I could teleport us both out if I need to.”

He shrugged, placated for now. Hanta was  _ extremely _ reticent to allow Vivian into direct danger. Every attack he took was one she didn’t have to, which was always a win in his book.

“You’re likely going to have to fall back to that choke point rather quickly,” the dragonborn woman noted. “These things may not be fast, but they hit hard, and there’ll be tons of them.”

“Don’t stick around more than you have to,” Vivian agreed. “I think I can basically seal off our choke point, but there’s not much I can do for you if you’re on the other side when I do it.”

“All righty,” Sienna said, hopping up from her chair. “Let’s go play some tower defense!”

  
  
The groups all filed out of the guildhall to prepare the town’s defenses before sunset. As they exited, though, Hanta quietly leaned over to Vivian, muttering, “... _your_ team, huh?”

Vivian flushed. “Oh, piss off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I was a bit Vivian-centric this time, but rest assured, Lux will be the focus of the next chapter to compensate. As always, I have people to thank!
> 
> -Psyntax, my DM - Shale Demons are original monsters of his, as are the Slithering Masses found in the town. As always, the entire campaign setting is also his creation.
> 
> -Hanta Noya is played by Sidney (https://violahcello.tumblr.com/, NiMing_YouLing here on ao3)
> 
> -David Armitage is played by Arthur
> 
> -Sienna Baker is played by Meri (@primalmeridian on Twitter)
> 
> -Woodular, aka "Woody," is played by Atlas (https://atlas-prime.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> -R


	4. Cleansing

Luxanna’s eyes opened to the sight of a darkened forest. 

“Huh, I must’ve overslept,” she muttered. She hadn’t even really meant to fall asleep, but she’d been travelling pretty much nonstop for the past several days through this massive forest, and she might have overworked her legs a bit. She’d stopped for a brief rest some time in the mid-afternoon with her back against a tree trunk, but now the forest was dark - probably some time around midnight.

“Well, might as well try and do some walking while it’s cooler out,” she said. Summer wasn’t Luxanna’s favorite time of year, and wearing metal armor while travelling for days on end in the sweltering heat was most of the reason why. She gathered up her gear and headed off, along the same trail she’d been following.

After she’d been walking for an hour or so, the forest had started to grow oddly  _ darker, _ somehow. Not just in terms of the actual light levels, either - the trees and shrubs were strangely twisted, as if strangled or tortured by some mysterious antagonist. They weren’t  _ dead _ by any means - it just appeared that their inherent life had been corrupted, taken over, twisted into something that they weren’t meant to be.

Luxanna noticed none of this, though - her eyes were on the dirt path before her, her mind freely wandering as she walked.

“Be wary, careful traveller!” Came a voice.

Luxanna let out a rather unladylike yelp of surprise at the completely unexpected voice, jumping nearly a foot into the air before her hand grasped the worn leather whip at her belt.

“Who’s there?” She called out to the darkness.

“I’m right in front of you.”

Luxanna squinted, then blinked her eyes in surprise - a rather beautiful young woman stood in her path, nearly invisible in the low light and the foliage. Upon getting a closer look, what Luxanna had originally guessed to be olive skin seemed to resemble the bark of a tree - her fetching green hair actually seemed to be more of a collection of leaves and small flowers.

“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” Luxanna said. She was perfectly cordial with the young woman, and her posture relaxed considerably, but she still kept her hand at her belt.

“I  _ do _ sort of blend in,” the woman shyly admitted. Her face took on a more dire cast as she met Luxanna’s eyes. “But I come here to warn you - the forest ahead isn’t safe. You should turn back and go around.”

“What makes it unsafe?” Lux asked, with absolutely no plans to do either of those things.

“Have you not seen the way that this land is blighted?” She asked, genuinely curious. She gestured to the trees around them - their bark was a sickly black, their branches twisted and jutting out towards the path, like the sharpened claws of a vengeful animal.

“I guess I must’ve missed that,” Lux admitted, just now noticing the rather obvious visual indication of something deeply  _ wrong _ with the forest around her. She turned back to the leaf-haired woman. “So, how did this blight happen? What’s causing it?”

The woman’s face was guarded, but her eyes betrayed a small sliver of hope. “You... you wish to cleanse it?” She asked.

“I can try,” Lux said with a one-shouldered shrug. “That’s sorta what I do now, I guess.”

The woman regarded her now, truly taking in Lux’s appearance. It was as if the woman were looking  _ beyond _ her clothes and her skin, looking into Lux’s essence, her soul.

“I... I see...” she said. Her eyes went wide with recognition. “You... you’re a green knight! You’re here to cleanse this forest, aren’t you?”

“Um...” Lux gave her an awkward smile, rubbing at the back of her neck. No one had ever really told her  _ what _ she was these days, exactly - besides somewhat putting together that she was a paladin and could use her magic to heal others and to smite her foes, she hadn’t really figured out where her power came from, or how it worked. She had it, and she could use it to protect people - _ that’s _ what mattered to her.

“Oh,” the woman said, her shoulders slumping. “I apologize - I did not mean to be presumptuous...”

“N-no! It’s okay!” Lux said, doing her best to reassure the woman. Her instinct was to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but she was unsure if the woman would be comfortable with that, and didn’t want to press. “I’ll admit, I didn’t come here on purpose to... um... ‘cleanse’ the forest - I’m just trying to get to the next town.”

The woman nodded, crestfallen.

“B-but!” Lux said, reaching towards her, but not touching. “If you think I can help, then I will.” She took a more purposeful stance, trying to make herself look at least a little bit taller. “I promise.”

The woman’s eyes lit up, and before Lux could even react, she threw her arms around her shoulders, hugging her with glee.

“You will? Oh, thank you, thank you,  _ thank you!” _

“U-um,” Lux said, gently resting her hands on the woman’s back to return the embrace. Her tree-like appearance wasn’t just visual - Lux could  _ feel _ the wooden texture of her back, the leaves of her hair rustling gently as she buried her face into Lux’s shoulder plate.

The woman soon pulled away, perhaps a little embarrassed at her outburst. Lux hadn’t been against the hug, just surprised - though there was a strange feeling in her stomach as the woman’s gentle fingers brushed against her armor-plated forearms as they parted.

“S-so,” Lux stammered, not expecting this very odd turn events but doing her best to roll with them. “You said that this land is blighted.”

“Yes,” she said. “My name is Roseris - I’m one of the only remaining dryads in this forest.”

“Oh, okay,” Lux said. That explained the barky skin and the leafy hair.

“Some months ago, a strange man came to the forest,” Roseris explained. “My sisters and I could smell some kind of foul magic on him, so we hid ourselves in the trees, hoping that he would simply pass through.”

“He didn’t do that, huh?” Lux said.

Roseris shook her head. “I’m afraid not - he is some sort of twisted, fey entity - I believe that he is trying to establish our forest as his own small realm, corrupting the land to his needs. Some of my sisters went to confront him, but they were no match - he could  _ paralyze _ them with just a glare. He kept them there, feeding on their fear. It only made his corruption of our forest swifter.” She looked down after reliving the harsh memory.

“I’m so sorry,” Lux said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “But I promise, I’ll do whatever I can. I’ve fought evil creatures before.”

“Well of course,” she said with a weak smile. “You  _ are _ a green knight, aren’t you?”

“I... um...” Lux’s face flushed. Why did people keep telling her she was green? None of her clothing was that color. “What do you mean?”

“You are a guardian of nature,” the dryad explained. “I can  _ feel _ the elder magic laced over you, just as I can feel the blight that is slowly corrupting my forest.” She gave Luxanna a quizzical look. “Has no one explained this to you?”

“Not really, no,” Lux said. She brushed her bangs out of her eyes, careful not to disturb the flower in her hair. “I found this flower when my friend and I were hunting a demon - it was the only one that had survived a fire. He got badly hurt, and suddenly, I could heal him.” She shrugged. “That was almost a year ago, but the flower hasn’t wilted or anything. Whenever I do magic, I can feel it get a little bit warmer. That’s pretty much all I know.”

“I... see,” Roseris said. From her expression, Lux gathered that this was not typical for a ‘green knight.’

“Either way, I still do want to help,” Lux said. “I may not know much about where my power comes from, but I promise, I know how to use it.”

Roseris just nodded. “Very well. Thank you so much - I wish you bountiful luck in your grave undertaking, noble knight of flowers.”

Lux just nodded at the title she’d apparently been given, not really able to process it or what it may mean. “Lead the way.”

* * *

  
  


“There’s too many of them!” David shouted, two beams of blue arcane energy leaping from his fingertips. They traveled at breakneck speeds and drilled into the writhing heap of corrupted tentacles before him, but the creature hardly seemed to slow down.

“Where’s the big one?” Hanta asked.

“Two o’clock!” David said. Immediately, Hanta turned, firing a bullet from each gun in that direction - it was beyond his vision, but it wasn’t too tough to hit a massive pile of cursed appendages and seawater. The bullets struck true, but once again, the creature was hardly inconvenienced.

Sienna ran to it, slicing her sword through its front in an ‘X’ shape. It did some  _ serious _ damage, but the creature’s massive tentacle swept her off her feet for her trouble, knocking her against the base of the tower.

_ “Sienna!” _ Vivian shouted, running toward her fallen form.

“I can heal her - go!” David yelled to Hanta and Woody. Both nodded - the former began to descend the tower and the latter just leapt over the side, transforming into a vulture made of wood and taking to the air. His eyes flashed, and the billowing tower of dark clouds he had summoned above them sent yet another bolt of lightning crashing down onto the shambling corpses that had come out from the waves.

David reached into his pack, pulling out the jet-black ankh that they had found in a tomb in Egypt. He closed his eyes and focused on the fallen Sienna. She wasn’t out of the battle just yet - but as a melee fighter, she’d be a lot closer to danger than he was, so she needed his strength more than he did.

Green radiant energy leapt from the ankh in his hands into her body - her half-lidded eyes  _ snapped _ open with renewed vigor as the writhing heap inched closer to her. David stumbled as the ankh sapped his own life force to heal her, but he managed to stay on his feet.

Hanta stepped up before the mass of tentacles, shooting it twice more, then whirling as he slammed the butt of his pistol into the creature. A small bolt of magical fire impacted it from the side, but it didn’t even seem to notice. Vivian appeared beside them, helping Sienna to her feet.

She looked between her brother and her youngest companion, torn.

“Get her out of here!” Hanta yelled.

“I can’t take both of you,” Vivian protested.

Hanta winced as one of the creature’s endless tentacles whipped him across the face, but he just shot it twice more for its trouble.

“GO!” He yelled. 

Vivian squared her jaw, closing her eyes for a moment as she lent some of her magical energy to her brother - the gentle ticking of a clock just barely reached their ears, as three spectral cogwheels hovered in the air before him. One was almost  _ immediately _ shattered by a tentacle, but the other two held up through a second attack.

“Don’t be long,” she said, taking Sienna’s hand.

With an echoing, thunderous  _ boom, _ the pair vanished, and the place where Vivian had just been standing erupted into lightning, crackling through the creature.

Not in the mood to wait around, Hanta elegantly ducked under the creature’s next swing, the following one shattering the two remaining cogwheels in front of him and still managing to lance across his back. The limping form of David was just  _ barely _ out of his field of view as he sprinted back to the choke point.

Vivian and Sienna landed, the rather violent means of teleportation depositing them onto the ground in the middle of the town’s main street.

“Okay,” Vivian said, stacking her hands together vertically, her fingers interlaced. “I really hope this works.”

Hanta skidded to a halt just beside them, looking a bit bloodier but otherwise no worse for wear.

“Where’s David?” Sienna asked.

“Wasn’t he with you?”

A crackle of blue arcane energy whose point of origin was blocked by a building shredded a zombie that had been shambling towards them to pieces, answering their question.

“If I start this without him, he won’t be able to get back in,” Vivian warned. “And I’m running out of teleports.”

“I’ve got him,” Hanta said, running off before they could protest.

Sienna whirled, beheading another zombie before Vivian even noticed it.

“Is Woody okay?” She asked, embedding her blade into another zombie’s chest before she shoved it off with her foot.

“He’s a vulture,” Vivian said, pointing to the wooden bird flying above them. Sienna watched as it burst into a pile of sticks and branches, with their friend landing somewhat haphazardly on a rooftop.

Vivian hurled another bolt of fire at the massive pile of tentacles that was still approaching, instantly returning to the same position. “Can you see the boys?”

Sienna squinted, trying to get a decent look out into the silvery mist that coated the ground up to their knees. 

“There they are!” She said, backing up to let them through.

Hanta ran full-tilt, holding an exhausted-looking David in an almost delicate bridal carry. Vivian squared her posture, feeling the magic thrumming inside her veins. Energy channeled through her entire body, up and down her arms. She had to shut her eyes to contain it.

“Are they through?” Vivian yelled.

A patter of footsteps shot past her, skidding to a halt. Hanta. She could barely hear his voice over the energy lancing through her, almost rooting her to the ground.

_ “HIT IT!” _   
  


Vivian had been told that her appearance subtly changed when she performed some of her more powerful spells. She had never really noticed, herself. The subtle changes were only visible to her and her targets - she’d never cast a powerful spell before a mirror, and her targets were usually too busy being a smoldering pile of dust on the ground to tell her that the hands of a clock had appeared inside her eyes.

Hanta, however, whose gift of blindsense let him see invisible magical effects just as clearly as anything else, had told her about how her eyes changed - once or twice, he’d noticed a floating pair of spectral cogwheels behind her, or the sudden and loud ticking of a clock.

This time, however, Hanta was not the only person who saw it.

Vivian’s eyes snapped open as the wind gathered in front of her, making her unzipped leather jacket billow behind her like a cape. Her three nearby companions shielded their faces as the wind in front of them became visible, swirling and beginning to form a sphere. 

The energy humming inside of Vivian was too strong, now - if she held on for another second it felt like her fingers would fall off. At last, with a violent jerk, she opened up her clasped hands, with tiny bits of electricity rapidly jumping between her matching fingers. 

And in-between her hands was a tiny ball of pure, violent energy.

A massive sphere of winds and lightning burst into existence with a loud, thunderous  _ boom, _ the sound nearly deafening the four of them instantly. An entire lightning storm was focused on that point, the howling winds and crackling energy immediately began to tear into the monstrous and undead creatures unfortunate enough to be caught within its event horizon. The three of them watched as Vivian’s skin and clothing turned a bright, metallic gold - there was suddenly so much light that David had to shield his sensitive eyes.

_ One _ of the zombies made it through the sphere, but only barely - it had been most of the way through when Vivian first conjured it. It nearly fell to its knees as the massive swirl of wind stopped pulling it in every direction at once, but it mindlessly shambled towards them all the same. Sienna split it in half from one shoulder to the opposite hip, almost bored with how simple the takedown was.

“You two go help the others!” Vivian shouted, her voice barely audible over the winds. David was sensitive to intense light because he could see in total darkness, and Hanta was sensitive to loud noises considering that his ears had compensated for his blindness - she knew that neither of them was thrilled about being this close. “Sienna will cut down any that make it through!”

Sienna gave them a nod, and they ran to the other choke point, where Woody had just dropped a fragmentation grenade on a mass of tentacles - it did  _ not _ take well to the modern weaponry, bubbling and writhing in pain.

“So,” David said as they ran. “Did  _ you _ know she could do that?”

* * *

Roseris pushed a branch aside - despite its wicked, lethal shape, it still bent away easily at her touch, though the action seemed to sicken the dryad a little bit, like she was picking up a dead animal to get it out of the road. 

“This is as far as I can take you,” she said, gesturing to a tight cordon of trees within a clearing. If Lux had to guess, they seemed to be in the dead center of the forest, which she supposed made sense as a place for an evil fey creature to live.

“Take  _ great _ caution when you face him, knight of flowers,” Roseris advised. “Do not meet his eyes - he can paralyze you with just his glare.” 

Lux nodded.

“And be sure your heart remains steadfast - he can feed on your fear.”

It was difficult to not be afraid when getting  _ that _ piece of advice, but Lux nodded again. 

“Thanks for all your help,” Lux said with the best smile she could muster. “Where can I find you after I take care of him?”

The dryad smirked. “This is my forest. I will find you.”

And with that, she melted into the trees, as if she was never there.

“Yeah, see you later,” Lux muttered. She turned towards the menacing cordon of trees. She took a minute to roll her shoulders, working out the kinks from sleeping against a tree. She took the worn leather whip off of her belt, leaving it coiled up in her left hand. 

She was ready.

* * *

“Ugh, good morning,” Vivian managed. A few groans from Woody and Sienna, who had also chosen to sleep in the guildhall that night, echoed out to acknowledge her. For once not bothering with makeup or even to brush out her hair, Vivian crawled out of the thin, hard bed, rooting around for her boots.

“Come on, let’s go get the others,” she rasped, adding yesterday’s sand-covered boots to yesterday’s sweat-soaked outfit, which she hadn’t really bothered to remove since they had crashed into bed at around four in the morning after barely staving off the creatures from the sea all night.

Vivian pushed a hand through her matted raven hair, making a tiny, frustrated sound as it caught on a tangle around halfway through. 

Fine, maybe she could brush it a  _ little _ bit.

  
  


After gathering Hanta and David from where they’d slept atop the stone tower outside the town,  _ just _ in case more creatures came in the few hours before sunrise, the group of five found themselves once again in the smallish guild hall, across the table from the town’s only pair of still-functioning experienced warriors. And judging by the sling that Raderrick’s arm was in, that number had gone down to one.

“So, how’d we do last night?” Vivian asked, once her companions all settled.

“Honestly, in terms of the end result, that was the best night this town has seen in weeks,” Lirith, the scaly paladin, answered. “We’d never seen so many of them before, and those weird flying things were a whole new type of creature...”

Vivian nodded, rubbing at her right shoulder. A brigade of small-ish flying manta rays had soared over the town walls, attacking them while she desperately tried to keep her choke point sealed off with her swirling ball of wind and lightning. She’d nearly lost control of her spell from the pain when one of them had sunk its teeth into her flesh, but she’d managed to hold on and electrocute the bothersome thing with the lightning coursing through her bare hand. Sienna had miraculously protected her from the rest.

“... Still, though. You five did fantastic work. We can’t thank you enough.”

“We appreciate it,” Vivian murmured. She looked to her tired companions - their conviction to protect this town’s innocents hadn’t waivered, but the fatigue of a combat that had lasted almost all night was still taking its toll. She looked back to Lirith. “But... I don’t know if we can take another night like that.”

“I think my sword needs to be sharpened for, like...  _ hours,” _ Sienna mused.

“I ran out of spells  _ twice,” _ David said. They’d had about an hour or so to recharge in-between waves, which was somehow enough time for him to refresh his magical capacity (it took Vivian  _ much _ longer), but he’d burned through it all again as soon as the fight resumed.

“There’s no way I have enough bullets to do that again,” Hanta said. “I  _ can _ fight with just my fists, but...”

“I think my animal forms and I took enough hits to kill me three times over,” Woody mentioned.

“What was the second thing you turned into?” Vivian asked. “I didn’t see it.”

“I was a rhino,” he said. 

“Oh,” she replied, with a little nod. She didn’t know he could do that - and from the look on Woody’s face when he said it, neither had he.

“Regardless, you make a good point,” came a voice from the male dragonborn beside Lirith, leaning on his crutches. “We  _ can’t _ have another night like last night. We need to light the Beacon.”

David perked up. “The what?”

“This is no time for your superstitions, Hazar,” Lirith scolded. 

Vivian focused him. “What Beacon?”

“The Voidsear Beacon,” Hazar responded, shooting Lirith a gloating look. “According to legend, its powerful magic flame warded off these creatures. They only started rising from the sea when it was snuffed out, years and years ago.”

“Sounds interesting,” Hanta said.  
“Can it really stop the creatures from coming?” Sienna asked.

“That’s what the legends say,” he replied.

Lirith gave him another glare. “We don’t even know for certain that it exists.”

“I like those odds,” Vivian declared. “Would you happen to know where it is?”

“Supposedly, an island south of here. It’s a tall tower, that’s all I know.”

“All in favor of finding and hopefully lighting a giant magical beacon that may or may not even exist?” Vivian asked, turning to her companions.

Four heads nodded back at her. 

“And what if you  _ don’t _ find it?” Lirith challenged.

“Then we’ll be back before nightfall,” Vivian replied. She stood up from her chair, giving the guildhall’s other occupants a nod. “See you soon.”

The five adventurers walked out from the chamber with renewed purpose. However, Hanta’s remarkably keen ears couldn’t help but pick up Vivian’s soft whisper.

“... I hope.”

* * *

“Who  _ dares _ enter my grove?” Came a low, bone-chilling voice.

“I’m here to stop you,” Lux said, her eyes closed, her expression hardened.

“Oh,  _ are _ you?” The voice asked. Even its bemused chuckle was terrifying. “And yet you came alone - you don’t even seem to have brought any iron with you. Do you truly think so highly of yourself?”

Lux gave a shrug, hoping she was facing him. “I’ve made it this far.”

“Indeed,” the voice observed. “Then it will be an honor to end your journey.”

Wicked claws laced across her back, making her cry out in pain. Lux’s breastplate deadened the blow somewhat, but the creature had already drawn blood near the base of her spine. Lux jumped forward and whirled, her whip lashing towards where the creature must have been standing, but it hit only empty air.

“Pathetic,” the voice mocked her. “You were a fool to come here.”

Lux’s whip cracked at the air again, in the direction of the sound. Nothing was there.

“You refuse to look at me,” he noted. “Are you afraid?”

Lux heard a heavy footstep from beside her - she leapt forwards into a roll, dodging as far as she could. It seemed that she had avoided the hit, but she still couldn’t get a bead on the creature’s location.

“I’m not  _ afraid, _ but this is getting annoying,” Lux said. “I never liked hide and seek when I was a kid.”

“A pity,” he laughed - apparently genuinely amused by her joke.

Lux’s whip cracked into the air, on opposite sides of her, but neither struck anything solid.

She grit her teeth. The problem with keeping her eyes closed was that it was  _ way _ harder to fight something she couldn’t see. Lux was at least able to keep up with his attacks - his heavy footsteps were usually  _ just _ enough indication that it was time to dodge out of the way - but she had yet to land a single hit.

“You’re more resilient than I was expecting,” he admitted as she sidestepped another leaping strike.

“Thanks,” she said, cracking a grin.

“Indeed,” came the voice - Lux’s heart froze over as she heard it inches from her nose, the creature’s breath puffing on her face. “Then let’s stop playing games, shall we?”

Before Lux could wind up her whip, the creature’s elongated claws raked up her chest, sending her sprawling backwards. Her arms flailed out to rebalance herself, and as she was about to fall over, her instincts kicked in in the worst possible fashion.

Luxanna opened her eyes.

Her muscles seized up instantly as she looked into the bemused glowing eyes of her foe - Lux had  _ barely _ found her footing before she was completely unable to move. The handle of her whip slid out of her paralyzed fingers, landing in the grass with a soft  _ thump. _

Considering that she no longer had a choice, Luxanna took in the creature’s appearance: He was a slightly too tall, slightly too lanky elven man, his face weathered with age in a way that Lux had never seen on an elf before. The biggest difference, though, were the horribly sharp claws at the ends of his fingers - the ones on his right hand were just slightly reddened by the blood they had drawn earlier.

“And so, we finally meet,” he grinned, his teeth far too numerous and needle-like to belong to a normal elf. He took his time approaching her, a hungry look in his eyes. Her vision swam around him as he walked closer - as if his gaze was disorienting her senses.

Lux grit her teeth as she tried to break free from the creature’s icy hold on her limbs. She could  _ feel _ the phantom grip around her, using every ounce of her willpower to resist it. Her heart  _ pounded _ inside her motionless chest - she knew that he could feed on her fear, but considering the fact that she was utterly paralyzed and facing down a creature that seemed ready to eat her alive, it was sort of impossible to suppress the emotion.

“Did they tell you what sort of creature I am, little girl?” He asked. 

Lux couldn’t move her jaw, but she still at least had enough control over her throat to give him a scoff. She wasn’t a little girl - she was about to turn twenty-five!

That is, if she made it that long.

“I am called a ‘fear smith,’ little knight,” he sneered. His unhurried walk had finally brought him right in front of her. He delicately raised one clawed hand, careful not to scratch her face as he thoughtfully cupped her chin. She tried to close her eyes, but she  _ couldn’t _ \- she just stared helplessly into the fear smith’s smug face. “And  _ your _ fear, why...” he trailed off, shifting his neck and shoulders around with a deeply satisfied breath. “It’s  _ delicious.” _

He moved her chin from side to side, considering her - Lux was  _ very _ frustrated by the fact that he could easily move her body around when she couldn’t even blink of her own volition.

“You know, normally, I just  _ kill _ my victims,” he mused, his eyes lazily appraising her face as if he were examining a work of art. “But I think it would be a waste to deprive the world of such  _ beauty.” _

If she could, Lux would have shuddered with discomfort.

“I plan to make this grove a seat of power, little knight,” he said, harshly pinching her face and bringing it so close that their noses were nearly touching. His breath was awful. “Though, having met  _ you _ , I do not think I need to rule alone.” His eyes bore into hers, now, staring into her very soul. 

“Join me. Become my bride, pledge to rule with me, and I shall spare your life, little green knight,” he said. His sneer deepened, brutally cruel. “But if you refuse, or ever defy me in the future...” he let out a tiny little laugh. “I will rip out your heart without another thought.”

Luxanna  _ screamed _ at her body to move. She was furious with this evil creature and his offer, and the sheer disgust that she felt began to overwhelm her fear of being helpless. She willed herself to move, to twist away, to run...

The index finger on her right hand twitched.

The fear smith smiled, completely unaware of the mental battle going on behind Lux’s cobalt eyes. He looked down at her, as if he were allowing her to consider his offer.

“In a moment, I will step away and release you, so that you may answer,” he said with a sickening grin. “Choose wise- _ ACK!” _

The fear smith’s eyes widened in confusion as he looked down at his stomach. His eyes flicked back to Luxanna’s, angrily - her frozen, horrified gasp had been replaced by a cheeky little smile.

“Sorry,” Lux said, the fear smith’s thick blood running down her arm. She twisted the dagger that she had drawn from her belt in secret, making him cry out in pain as it carved into his chest. With a  _ massive _ effort of will, she had begun to slowly reclaim control over her muscles. “Can we just stay friends?”

The fear smith roared, shoving Lux off of him. She crashed down on her back, wincing at the hard impact before she could move her torso. It took her a moment to get control of her legs again as she shook the paralysis from her system, but she finally made it to her feet, facing her enemy. When she met his eyes again, the fear smith was hunched forward, his clawed fingers wrapping around the handle of the dagger to pull it from his chest.

“A  _ trick,” _ he seethed, noticing that his gaze no longer seemed to work on her. “You were just  _ pretending  _ to be affected!”

“No, you  _ definitely _ had me for the first minute, there,” Lux admitted, grabbing her whip and coiling it around her arm. She closed her eyes, shuddering. “I just...  _ really _ don’t wanna marry you.”

He roared again, leaping for her.

* * *

“How many bloody stairs are in this bloody thing?” Vivian muttered to no one in particular.

“We saw it from the outside - it’s a big tower,” Sienna said. She smirked. “You’re just slow.”

“Not all of us can be track and field athletes, thank you,” Vivian shot back. “My day job consisted of sitting behind a desk and telling other people to do things.”

“You can ride on my back if you want,” Hanta offered, clearly joking.

“Ugh. This is why we invented elevators.”

* * *

Luxanna whirled, her whip lashing into the fear smith’s chest with a loud  _ crack! _ He grunted, falling to the ground mid-leap.

“What’s the matter?” Lux asked with a grin. “Not used to people fighting back?”

The fear smith growled in frustration - ever since she’d gained control of her body again, Lux had been dictating the pace of the battle, mostly preventing him from getting close enough to use his claws. He’d gotten in one or two solid hits, but the moment that Lux had really started bleeding, she’d put a hand on her breastplate and healed away the worst of her injuries.

“Insolent pest,” the fear smith growled. He made a quick arcane gesture in the air, reaching out at her mind in a different manner. Her eyes briefly widened as she recognized him as a spellcaster, but the magic hit her brain before she could react.

_ “Grovel,” _ he commanded, making Lux drop to her knees without hesitation, a blank expression on her face. Her cobalt eyes hazily blinked at nothing in particular. 

Not wasting time, he ran to her, cupping her cheek once more. This time, he put far less effort into being delicate,  _ tearing _ at the fear inside of her to heal himself instead of savoring it like he had previously. The moment he was done, Lux’s hazy, bleary eyes snapped back into focus, angrier than they had been before. He tried to jump back, but her leather whip glowed with a divine brilliance that illuminated the entire shaded grove. With a brutal  _ crack, _ she hit him hard enough to almost knock him off his feet, dealing back some of the damage he had just repaired.

“Cheater,” Lux pouted. 

“I liked this much better when you couldn’t speak,” he grimaced.

“‘A pity,’” she said, doing an impression of his earlier comment. Her whip lashed out at him once more, but he managed to dodge to the side.

If she was being honest, Lux’s taunting was at least a little bit of a smokescreen for how the battle was actually going. Things had most certainly improved since the fear smith had been holding her by the chin while she was helplessly paralyzed, no doubt about that - but the corrupted fey’s wicked claws still  _ seriously  _ hurt when he managed to slash into her with them. Plus, while she was trying to hide it, his gaze was still very disorienting - if she ran too quickly while looking at him, she was hit by a bout of vertigo and had to struggle to stay on her feet. She needed to wrap this up before he got another chance to turn the tide of the fight.

The fear smith began to make another gesture in the air, and Lux braced herself.

Because _ of course _ he was also a spellcaster.

She heard him muttering as something began to swirl around her - more than just the unnatural way that the ground twisted and shifted at her feet whenever she looked at him for too long, which was apparently just an inherent thing she had to deal with - Luxanna’s eyes just started full-on  _ lying _ to her about her surroundings. Suddenly the fear smith was here, then he was there, then there were ten of him, then he was upside-down...

Lux put a hand to her temple in frustration, trying to desperately settle her addled mind.

“Oh, poor thing,” the fear smith snarled, the sound echoing as if he had seven mouths. “You don’t look too well. Here, let me feel your forehead...”

His claws  _ raked _ across her chest, making Lux cry out in pain as she fell onto her back. She shivered, feeling his hands cup her cheeks again, sapping even more of her life energy. She squirmed, kicking wildly, briefly forcing him off. She rolled to the side, trying to stand, but her head was still spinning, and his claws ran across her back again, leaving three sizeable gash marks on the back of her armor, and one in her flesh. She whipped her head around, but each time she thought she laid eyes on him, he either vanished completely or split into several different images as her vision kept swimming.

Luxanna clawed at her temples in anger.

“Get out of my  _ head!” _ she screeched.

“I’ll politely decline, if that’s all right with you,” his echoing voice chuckled. 

Lux rolled away again, somehow dodging what she  _ thought _ were his claws raking through the dirt where she had just been lying. At this point, it could have easily been one of the numerous illusory copies that clogged up her vision. She managed to make it up to one knee, panting heavily.

“Well, little knight, it’s been fun,” he said. For the briefest moment, her addled mind focused just enough - three images of the fear smith briefly coalesced into one. Luxanna  _ immediately _ lashed out with her whip, and to her absolute amazement, the strike landed true - divine radiance coated the aging leather as it lashed into his chest, almost knocking him off his feet.

_ Finally, _ her vision cleared up significantly - there was only one fear smith, though the floor still twisted and turned whenever she looked anywhere near his face.

“Ugh,” Lux said, now out of snarky comments. She wound her whip back up for another strike, and noticed a worrying thing - the hardened tip had split into two from its constant use. Upon reflection, perhaps an instrument meant to herd cattle wasn’t the  _ best _ thing to channel divine radiance into over a period of multiple years. 

“What’s the matter, little knight? Is your weapon broken?” The fear smith sneered - he wasn’t totally uninjured, but he was looking better than he had been before he’d nearly obliterated her perception like that. He must have healed quite a bit from her fear while she’d been out.

Lux grimaced, lashing out towards him once more. Both broken halves of her whip struck his body, but he wasn’t slowed by the impact like he had been with her previous strikes. He leapt at her but she jumped to the side, striking again - this time, she infused the swing with another mote of her power. This one seemed to do some more damage, but her whip was also debilitated even further.

“I wonder, which will break first?” The fear smith asked with a sneer. “You, or your weapon?”

Lux growled in anger, whirling and swinging once more, pouring even more energy into the strike. The fear smith recoiled once more, and Lux pressed her advantage. If the whip itself wasn’t hurting him much anymore, she’d just have to compensate with her magic. 

_ Crack! _

The fear smith winced, taking up a defensive posture.

_ Crack! _

The divine radiance lit up the shady grove.  
_Crack!_

Her whip was in _five_ pieces now.  
_Crack!_

The fear smith snarled.  
_Crack!_

Her magic didn’t enter the weapon.

_ Wshh.  _

Her whip was in tatters.

Her foe stood there panting, bleeding in a few places - he was injured, certainly, but not nearly as much as she’d been hoping.

_ “There _ we are,” the fear smith said, pressing down his slightly wrinkled clothing. “Quite finished?”

Lux’s eyes went wide with pure, unadulterated terror. The fear smith gave a toothy grin.

“Delightful.”

With preternatural speed, he charged her - the broken whip fell from Lux’s fingers as he picked her up off the ground, shoving her nearly halfway across the grove before her back painfully slammed against a tree, winding her. Stars swam back and forth in her vision, and this time, it wasn’t because of the fear smith’s magic.

“You fought well, little knight,” he said, holding her against the tree by her neck with one clawed hand. He shook his head with disbelief, chuckling. “I still can’t believe you honestly challenged me without bringing any iron.”

“Nobody... told me,” Lux choked out.

He looked at her. “Honesty in your final moments. I appreciate that.”

He raised his claws, ready to drive them through her torso. Lux closed her eyes, awaiting her fate, but he paused for a moment, considering.

“Although, a green knight as a companion could be  _ quite _ the asset,” he mused, pulling the sharp instruments away. “Perhaps you could still be of use to me yet.”

“I’m not... marrying you,” Lux managed.

“Not willingly, it seems,” the fear smith agreed, shrugging as if this were a mild inconvenience. “But, not to worry,” he said, grinning as his free hand made another arcane gesture. “I think you’ll find that I can be very...  _ persuasive.” _

Lux desperately shut her eyes - she was  _ sick _ of this twisted creature messing with her head. She clenched her jaw as the fear smith’s mutterings took on a honeyed sweetness. She could  _ feel _ him pulling her mind away from her. It whispered to her, telling her to trust, to obey...

_ No! _ Lux shouted in her head.  _ Not this time! Not again! _

  
  


The fear smith let the blond-haired girl fall to the ground. She landed hard on her hands and knees, and he stepped back to observe his handiwork.

“So, little knight,” the fear smith said, carefully regarding her. “Do you still want to hurt me?”

She sat back on her heels, blinking, her eyes hazy. She shook her head as if to clear it, then looked up at him, her eyes finally focused.

_ “Hurt _ you?” She asked, confused. “Why would I? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

_ “Excellent,”  _ he said with a smile. This effect would be temporary, but the girl’s will would break over time. Perhaps he would get his queen after all. “You are a healer, correct?”

She blinked at him again, then piped up. “Yep! Why do you ask?”

“I’ll confess, that conflict got me a bit more wounded than I expected to be,” he said, showing her the multiple angry red welts on his torso. 

“Oh my gosh, I’m  _ so _ sorry!” She said, popping up to her feet, a white light focusing in her hand. “Don’t worry, I can take care of it...”

“That’s very kind, thank you,” the fear smith said,  _ relishing _ in his little knight’s obedience.

“Let’s see what we’re dealing with, here,” she said, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder to get a closer look. 

Suddenly, before he could react, the hand on his shoulder tightened its grip, and her glowing hand whipped down to her belt, removing a second dagger. It, too, glowed with a nearly blinding white light as she aggressively rammed it into his torso, focusing the very last ounces of her divine power into the strike.

The fear smith froze, meeting her eyes as the knife went further into his chest. He let out a choked gasp - the previous one had been made of steel, but...

“That dagger was cheaper,” Lux said as he staggered backward, clutching his chest. “Judging by your face... I guess it’s made of iron, huh?”

The fear smith made another choking sound, landing on his back. “H-how...” he managed, gasping for air.

“Honestly?” Lux asked, kneeling over him. “That time, I  _ was _ pretending.”

She removed the cold iron blade from his torso, and used it to slice his throat.

* * *

“So,” Sienna said, as they all stared at the massive sphere of pure divine sunlight that a red dragon had just ignited on top of the tower. The Voidsear Beacon was lit once more, banishing the greater darkness from The Descent. “That was... that was a thing.”

“It most assuredly was,” Vivian said, completely overwhelmed by their several combats with fiery elementals, odd diamond-shaped prisms that threw fireballs at them until she’d been close enough to counter their spells, strange magical falling rock traps, two goblin spellcasters (one of which they’d snuck past), and finally, a conflict with one massive shale demon and two smaller cobble demons that they’d had to kill four times each before they actually stayed dead. If David hadn’t banished the larger demon to another plane while they dealt with the recurring smaller ones, it was  _ more _ than likely that they wouldn’t have all been standing there.

“Thank fuck the dragon was nice,” Woody said. _That_ got a round of nods from the entire group. They had spotted the creature flying about the tower when they approached - they weren’t sure that they would be able to fight the massive dragon when they were all in prime shape, and they’d been running themselves ragged for the past thirty-six hours.  
“All righty,” Hanta said, pointing at the newly-lit Beacon. “That thing is way too freakin’ bright, and I’m exhausted. I’m gonna go collapse downstairs.”

“Right behind you,” David said immediately. They’d come to understand that his magic came from the  _ exact _ opposite end of the spectrum of the Beacon - it almost hurt him to stand this close. Vivian, however, was much more compatible. To her, it was a gentle, comforting warmth.

“Same,” Woody said, following them down.

“I’m gonna stay here,” Sienna said. She drew her greatsword, looking over the empty, circular hole just above its pommel. “I’m pretty sure I can infuse this light or whatever into my sword.”

“I think I’ll keep her company,” Vivian said. The three boys just nodded tiredly, and the five of them prepared to bed down for the next eight hours or so. It was around two o’clock in the afternoon, but their Circadian rhythms had all gone out the window about a week ago, and they were so exhausted that they could all basically sleep on command.

Sienna walked over to the wall of the massive tower, sliding down it to stare up at the beacon in a seated position, her sword between her legs, but not in danger of cutting into her jeans.

Vivian plopped down next to her, opening up the spellbook application she’d programmed for her tablet. The thing was pretty low on power, but she ignored it. She’d actually figured out how to charge it using her own magic - it didn’t even take any of her energy for the day, but at this point, even the tiniest bit of magical effort was too much.

“So, I’ve been looking at a few new spells,” she said, making conversation. “I think I’ve almost got them figured out.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sienna asked. “Anything cool?”

She chuckled. “You know how Kit can make a tiny hand that can open doors and such?”

Sienna nodded.

“I think I can figure out how to make a  _ really big _ hand, and punch people with it.”

“Awesome,” she giggled.

“Yes - for some reason, it has to be purple,” she said. She cleared her throat. “A-anyways, I was also looking at another way to communicate. With people we know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, my magic phone call spell only works if someone is on the same plane as me - and these days, we spend so much time  _ here  _ that that’s rarely the case.”

“Uh-huh,” Sienna said.

“And I  _ think _ I’ve figured out a way to talk to anyone I’ve spoken to before - except this time, it’ll go across planes. To anyone, anywhere.”

“That sounds handy.”

“Yes. The message will probably be  _ much _ shorter, but - anyways. I was thinking, if we’re still here when I figure it out...” she turned, meeting Sienna’s eyes. “I think I’d be able to send messages to your parents, and they’d be able to respond to me.”

Sienna’s eyes lit up, looking at her with a grateful smile.

Sienna’s first two months at The Organization had been spent with absolutely no knowledge of her parents’ safety or whereabouts. Like the Noya twins, her discovery of her magical nature had come rather suddenly and with a fair amount of violence - one evening while her parents were out, a man had knocked on her door, and teleported inside when she didn’t answer. Sienna had been teleported out of her room at the very last second by Kit, and she eventually noticed her superhuman strength and endurance, predator-like fangs, and her ability to track prey like a wolf - and she’d been picked up by The Organization before the man had managed to find her again. She hadn’t tried to reach out to her parents for fear that proximity to her would put them in danger, but in their two-week break from work, she’d accompanied Vivian back to her London flat and they had tracked the couple down together. 

After Vivian’s private jet had taken them to and then from the United States, Sienna had had to tell her parents precisely  _ how _ she knew a British multimillionaire ten years her senior, and why said British multimillionaire was more than willing to let the couple stay in her high-security flat for the time being. Upon seeing Vivian run some magical lighting over her fingers, her mother had fainted. Conveniently, Sienna’s father worked in technology, so his transition to Noya Industries had been relatively swift and easy. Now, they watched over Vivian’s dog, Hope, as they petitioned the UK for citizenship.

“R-really?” Sienna asked. “You think you’ll be able to talk to my mom and dad?”

“Theoretically, yes - no matter  _ where _ we are,” Vivian said. She held up a placating hand. “Now, I likely won’t be able to do it  _ every _ day. It looks like it’ll take a significant amount of magical energy, so if we’ve run ourselves ragged, like today, I probably won’t have the juice.”

Sienna nodded at that, settling down a bit, but still excited.

“Thanks, Vivian. I... I really appreciate that.” She sighed, looking down at the ground. “It’s been kinda hard without them, y’know?”

“I can’t imagine,” Vivian said. She’d frankly felt a bit of  _ relief _ when her own parents had been declared dead, but she still couldn’t possibly fathom having to live completely without them for  _ their _ safety at the age of sixteen. Sienna had the four of them, certainly - and she didn’t need to worry about money or food for the time being, but still... the sheer amount of self-reliance that must have been thrust upon her was honestly frightening. Vivian had no idea how the girl was handling it as well as she seemed to be.

“Wait, I just remembered,” she said, crestfallen. “Are you sure it’s  _ safe _ to use magic on them? Just looking at it can seriously hurt people, right?”

“Oh, bollocks, you’re right,” Vivian said. They weren’t  _ certain _ whether her mother had fainted from shock or just from the inherent bodily harm that comes to some people from witnessing the arcane. Casting a spell  _ on _ her parents might carry some serious consequences, especially with repeated usage.

“Yeah...” Sienna said. “Thanks anyways.”

“Well, hold on a minute,” Vivian said, bumping her shoulder against Sienna’s. “I know for a fact that  _ June _ can look at magic without being harmed - Kit told me as much, and she’s seen me do some of it around my flat without any ill effect. If we have to, I’ll cast the spell on her, and then she can just text your parents what you said.”

Sienna looked back up at her, smiling. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Thanks, I... I hope that’ll work.” She thought for a moment. “Are you sure that, uh, June... she’d be okay with doing that? Texting back and forth and everything?”

Vivian gave the girl a soft smile, briefly laying her arm across her shoulders and squeezing her close. “I know she would.” 

Sienna just nodded, not saying anything.

“We’ll figure it out,” Vivian said. “I promise.”

She looked back, and Sienna had already fallen asleep against her shoulder.

Vivian just gently smiled, letting sleep take her as well.

* * *

Roseris pushed past the blackened trees, entering the mangled grove with astonishment and hope on her face. She’d  _ felt _ the forest change as the corrupted presence had been destroyed, rushing to the grove immediately. She burst into the clearing, looking around the still dim area.

“Hello?” She called, confused at the lack of any obvious figures.

“Over here,” a voice called from beside her.

Roseris turned to see the green knight sitting with her back against a tree, the ugly corpse of the fear smith a few feet away from her. The knight had a hand on her chest, and judging from the various wounds that were plainly visible, even from a distance, she’d very nearly lost her life.

Roseris gasped, rushing to the wounded knight. She just tiredly waved at her approach, her cobalt eyes softening as she gave a wan smile.

“Hey,” she said, coughing a little. “You, uh... you wouldn’t happen to have any healing magic or anything, would you? I’m fresh out.”

“It’s not much, I’m afraid,” she said. “But... here.”

The dryad closed her eyes, causing a bundle of small berries to appear in her hand. She offered them timidly to the knight, who took a handful and ate them. She chewed thoughtfully.

“Not bad,” she said, her mouth still full. She swallowed. “Thank you.”

“I believe I am the one who should be thanking you,” Roseris said shyly.

“What, that guy?” Said the knight, pointing to the corpse in front of her. “Nah, he wasn’t too tough.”

Roseris looked at her. “Truly?”

The knight laughed. “No, I’m kidding - if I hadn’t gotten lucky in, like... three different cases, I would totally be dead right now.” Somehow, expressing this thought aloud didn’t seem to trouble her.

“My sincerest apologies,” Roseris mumbled. In her haste at the chance to cleanse her forest, she hadn’t  _ quite _ realized that she may have been sending the knight to her untimely death.

“It’s okay,” The knight said. “I was happy to help. I just...” she exhaled, adjusting her posture a little bit. She seemed to be  _ very _ sore. “I don’t think I’ll be able to handle somebody using magic to mess with my head like that again. For, like...  _ ever.” _

Roseris just hummed at that - she had felt a horrid, icy dread in her chest when she’d just barely witnessed her sisters being paralzyed before she fled. She couldn’t  _ imagine _ what it was like to actually endure it, and then come out the other side.

“Sit with me a minute?” she asked.

“Sorry?” Roseris said.  
“Oh, um... it’s okay if you have somewhere to be or whatever, I just... I think I’m gonna have to rest here, for a bit. I _think_ I can walk, but I really don’t wanna try. So, um... would you mind just sitting here with me?”

“N-no, I don’t,” Roseris said. She spent the next thirty seconds or so getting situated, also leaning against the wide trunk of the tree. Her shoulder was about six inches away from the knight’s, and they both just stared into the grove, watching the various bugs and woodland animals timidly return to the twisted epicenter.

“So... the fight was arduous, then?”  
“Yeah. He had me pinned to this tree, ready to claw my chest out, but he changed his mind. He wanted to, like... _marry_ me, instead.”

_“What?”_ Roseris asked, shocked and infuriated.  
“I know, right?” She agreed with a laugh. “I’d already told him ‘no thanks,’ but... he tried some kind of spell on me, trying to make me obey him or something. Trust him, see him as a friend.”

“A charm spell,” Roseris gently explained. “It’s... common, among the fey folk.”

_ “Great,” _ she said tersely. “Anyways, it didn’t work, I shook it off right away, somehow. Must’ve just been lucky, I guess. Earlier, when he’d had me paralyzed, I managed to break free and stab him, and he was shocked - he said I must have been faking it.”

“Were you?” Roseris asked.

“No, he  _ definitely _ got me for real,” she admitted. “But it gave me an idea. Later, when he tried the, uh... charm... thing... I knew it hadn’t worked, but I  _ acted _ like it had. He asked me to heal him, I said I would, and then...” 

She made a stabbing motion with her hand.

“That must have been incredibly quick thinking,” Roseris said.

“Oh, not really.” She shrugged, pointing to the corpse. “Credit goes to him for saying I must’ve faked it - I never would have thought to  _ actually _ fake it if he hadn’t brought it up.” She chuckled. “I’m really glad he was so arrogant. My acting was pretty terrible, but I think it worked because he didn’t really expect his spell to fail.”

There was a brief pause, as the pair just enjoyed the silence.  
“Oh,” she said. “I also lost my weapon.”

“What happened? Did he destroy it?”

“No, it just kinda gave out from age, I think,” she said. “I’ve had it since I was little, on my parents’ farm, and I’ve been fighting monsters with it for a few years. It was bound to go eventually.”

Roseris blinked at the naked humanity in the warrior’s words - how easily she spoke about the fight, her past, and losing her weapon, which apparently had so much sentimental value. She had been raised to believe that green knights were stoic guardians, eternal defenders of light and beauty - and while that was maybe true in most cases, this woman was certainly an exception.

“I... I’m so sorry,” she said, upon realizing.

“Mm? Nah, it’ll be okay. Fighting with just my daggers will be a pain, but I’m sure I can just buy a new whip in the next town.”

“Oh, there’s that,” Roseris agreed. “But also, I... I just realized that I never asked your name.”

She put her head in her hands, ashamed with herself. She had practically  _ begged _ the woman to risk her life for her home forest, and hadn’t even asked her her  _ name. _

“I’m Luxanna!” She chirped. With a grunt of effort, she offered Roseris a hand. “Luxanna Starsinger. But you can call me ‘Lux!’”

Roseris shook the hand, smiling. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Luxanna Starsinger, noble knight of flowers.”

“Just ‘Lux’ is fine, really,” she said with a chuckle.

“Very well,” Roseris agreed. “Lux.”

  
  


Lux opened a pair of eyes that she hadn’t  _ quite _ remembered closing at the gentle sound of rustling leaves. Roseris the dryad was making her way to her feet.

“Oh, apologies,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Some of my sisters have come to the grove, and I wanted to explain what you have done for our forest. Is that all right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Lux said, yawning. “I uh... I think I’m still gonna rest here, if that’s okay.”

“Take all the time you need,” Roseris assured. “I’ll watch over you while you sleep.”

Lux got that same strange feeling in her stomach again.

  
  


When she came to several hours later, Roseris was also asleep, though she was lying on the ground, somewhat facing Lux, rather than sitting next to her. Luxanna stretched, hearing a few loud snaps as her body woke up - she  _ really  _ had to stop sleeping against the trunks of trees. Lux shakily pulled herself to her feet. She  _ definitely _ wasn’t fully back, not yet, but she was feeling much better. A bit of her divine magic had returned, too, which was reassuring in case any of her partially-healed wounds reopened during her travel.

She looked down at Roseris, a smile lighting the corners of her lips at the curious way that the slumbering dryad’s leafy hair blended in with the grass of the forest floor. Oddly, her hand was clasped around a strange black cord, something she definitely hadn’t been carrying before. She was curled protectively around it.

Not feeling up to hunt for her breakfast, Lux just stretched out her body for a few minutes, pushing small amounts of her divine healing into the sorest muscles and the nastiest wounds. Officially out of things to do, she sat back down a respectable distance from Roseris, and waited.

It didn’t take too long - only five minutes or so passed before the dryad awoke, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her wooden hand.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Lux teased, knowing full well that the only reason she’d woken up first was because she’d had a few hours’ head start.

“Good morning,” she said with a smile, pushing herself up to a seated position. “Are you feeling well?”

“Not  _ quite _ as good as I did when I got here, yet, but I’m on my way,” Lux said. “I can walk again, so that’s exciting.”

“Progress,” the dryad agreed with a chuckle.

She held the cord in her hands out to Lux.

“Here,” she said. “My sisters and I spent most of the night crafting this for you - when you said your weapon had been destroyed, I thought we should do our best to replace it...”

“Whoa, really?” Lux exclaimed, excitedly running her hands along the material. “You didn’t have to do this!”

“We are in your debt,” she said simply, though she was clearly a little embarrassed at the praise. “I only hope it can replace the sentimental value of the old one.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Lux said. “I can still keep the handle of the old one in my pack or something.”

“A fine idea,” she agreed.

Roseris watched with fascination as Lux turned the whip over in her hands, her fingers eagerly running along the ebony material. She was enchanted by it - when she began to uncoil it, only for the whip to retract and coil itself back up on its own, she jumped slightly, yelping with a combination of surprise and elation.

“Whoa! Is this thing magical?”

“It is, yes,” she said. “The enchantment is a bit... harsh _. _ Unfortunately, it will take time for the corruption in our forest to heal, and I fear that some of the nature of this twisted place may have pulled our magic in a rather...  _ cruel _ direction.”

Lux gave her a worried look. “Does it make people lose their minds or something when I hit them with it?” She said, clearly concerned about inflicting that sort of effect onto others.

“No, no, its enchantment isn’t mental in nature,” she said, causing Lux’s shoulders to immediately slump with relief. “Instead, when you land a particularly powerful strike with the weapon, it will leech away some of your target’s strength, to restore your magic - just as the butterfly drinks from the flower.”

“Whoa, okay...” Lux said, awed by the concept. “So I can maybe recover some of my spent divine energy?”

“Yes,” she explained. “The nature of your enemy is irrelevant - so long as your strike is particularly accurate and powerful, it should be able to sap their strength and let you recover your magic.”

“That’s... amazing,” Lux said.

“We’ve called it the Butterfly Tongue,” she said. “It is our gift to you.”

Hardly thinking, Lux reached out, taking one of Roseris’s hands in both of her own. “This is  _ extremely _ generous,” she said, her voice deep and sincere. “Thank you - truly.”

Roseris was silent, the bark on her cheeks a bit closer to red than to brown.

“Y-you’re welcome,” she said, brushing her leafy hair out from her eyes. “It was truly the least we could do.”

“Still, I’m very grateful,” Lux said. “Thank you so much.”

The two just held each others’ gaze for a moment. Roseris’s eyes went a little wide, and the reddening on her cheeks increased. Suddenly, Lux made three realizations back-to-back.

Firstly, the weird feeling in her stomach was back, and stronger than ever - something about the way that Roseris looked at her just made Lux’s insides tie themselves in knots.

Secondly, because she was a dryad, a forest fey made of bark and leaves, Lux realized for the very first time that the woman before her was  _ completely naked, _ save for a few miniscule leaves on her most private areas.

Thirdly, she was  _ still _ holding Roseris’s hand.

Luxanna suddenly understood why she’d never taken much of an interest in men.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once again to all of these amazing people!
> 
> -Psyntax, the Dungeon Master for this campaign
> 
> -Hanta Noya is played by Sidney (https://violahcello.tumblr.com/, NiMing_YouLing here on ao3)
> 
> -David Armitage is played by Arthur
> 
> -Sienna Baker is played by Meri (@primalmeridian on Twitter)
> 
> -Woodular, aka "Woody," is played by Atlas (https://atlas-prime.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> -R


	5. The Two Meet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you get the Bayonetta reference in this chapter's title, I love you
> 
> -Red

Vivian hadn’t really thought it was possible anymore, but somehow, she was having a  _ very _ unusual day.

After recovering from their absurdly difficult fight to light the Beacon, she had done a bit of magical experimenting and figured out how to send a  _ very _ brief message to anyone, anywhere - provided that she’d spoken to them at least once before. She already had the ability to call anyone she’d met before on the phone, compelling them to answer (with the main stipulation being that that person had to be close to a phone). However, for one reason or another, that ability didn’t work if the person she tried calling was in her world while she was exploring the new one, and that was apparently how she’d been spending most of her time lately. As a result, she was now updating their employer, Kit, on their progress.

**“Hi - found settlement called Bastion. Defended from night creatures, directed to divine beacon. Lit it, creatures stopped coming but still alive. Report back in person?”**

She wasn’t sure how long it would take the woman to respond, but when she heard some words back in her head, she learned that it was fairly quickly.

**"Astounding! Found new recruit! Will be joining you soon. Templars are becoming a nuisance. Should maybe address."**

Vivian blinked at the odd response. Firstly, since when did Kit have a say on who they travelled with? She  _ may _ have brought them together, but Vivian was not at all interested in babysitting some “new recruit.” Her family was already the right size.

“Okay, everyone,” she said, getting the group’s attention as they sat, relaxing around the bar of the only tavern in Bastion. “I guess our ‘boss’ wants to see us.”

* * *

Luxanna spun in a full circle, taking in the gorgeous city of Kalthii. It seamlessly transitioned from a massive, sprawling port town to a dense jungle, with all kinds of clever feats of engineering designed to allow people easier access to buildings that sprouted out from massive trees. On one side, a bustling waterfront economy. On the other, a complex series of pulleys and wood-and-paper cages that rapidly brought passengers up and down - most of the people taking them weren’t even  _ impressed _ by it. 

Having grown up in a tiny, literally nameless farming village, Lux couldn’t believe her eyes. She’d seen greater towns and even a small city or two in her travels, but  _ this... _

Nothing could compare.

A few people were giving her looks, some even bumping into her - dimly, Lux realized that she’d been standing in the middle of the busy roadway. She awkwardly stepped out of everyone’s way, muttering an apology every three feet or so. Finally, when out of the main thoroughfare, Lux found herself standing in front of what looked like a tavern.

She’d been to taverns before. She and Greyvalor had often stayed in them, considering that for most of the places they’d been, the tavern and the inn were the same building. It would often be one of two or three non-residential buildings in the whole village, along with a general store and maybe a tailor’s shop, smithy, or even a formal, indoor farmer’s market.

Lux would bet that Kalthii had about ten of those buildings,  _ each. _

“How much for a tankard?” Lux asked, sitting at the corner of the bar. The tavern was a welcome break from the hustle and bustle outside, though it was more populated than she’d been expecting, given that it was barely past noon.

“Tankard o’ what?” The Elvish woman replied, eyeing Lux over the counter. “We got ale, lager, cider, mead, whiskey and fruit wine.” She raised an eyebrow. “You’re new here?”

“U-um, yeah,” Lux said, a faint blush on her cheeks. She’d never been to a tavern that sold  _ that _ many different beverages before - she’d had ale most frequently, and tasted lager about twice. Everything else was a mystery.

“Here,” she said, giving Lux a bit of a smile. “‘Round here, we’re famous for our Cocoa Porter.”

“What’s that?” 

“Ever had a hot chocolate?”

Lux shook her head.

She gave Lux a wink and a smile. “Eight copper.” 

Too shy to raise an eyebrow at the high price, Lux pulled out her purse, rooted around for the coins, and handed them over. Almost  _ instantly, _ the barkeep plopped down a foamy mug of a thick brown liquid - by the time Lux looked up to thank her, she’d moved on to the next person already.

Lux took a sip from the drink, immediately humming with satisfaction at the taste. It was warm and amazingly sweet - strong, but pleasant, not overwhelming. It was probably better than any ale she’d ever had, and the barkeep had just handed it over without pretense. Normally, the barkeeps she’d met had really had to sell her on the flavor of their drinks, but this business apparently had no need to be so persuasive.

Okay,  _ maybe _ this stuff really was worth eight copper.

“Bastion? Where in Derah’s ass is that?”

“Dunno, north o’ here, I think. Some island town, what needs adventurers. Crazy black monsters come outta the sea every night.”

“No foolin’?”

“S’ what the fella said down by the docks.”

“And how much’re they payin’ ya?”

“Not much - mostly fer ‘volunteers.’ But it’s a thing ta do, and I’m sure the island folk have some gold ta fork over ta bastards with swords.”

“Aye, and ya certainly are that!”

The two halflings shared a laugh and clanked their tankards together, their drinks spilling over and mixing, both in their cups and on the table between them. They both took hearty sips, and Lux’s cobalt eyes widened as they both  _ kept _ drinking, and drinking, and drinking...

And to her astonishment, both men downed their entire beers without ever once stopping to breathe.

“Where does it all  _ go?” _ she asked, her voice full of quiet fascination.

One of the grizzled men caught her eye - Lux immediately noticed the scars on his face.

“Hey there, pretty lady - you see somethin’ you like?”

“Not really,” Lux admitted. The comment was genuine, and she didn’t necessarily  _ mean _ for it to be insulting, but the way that he stood up most certainly indicated that it was taken that way. Lux raised her hands, placating.

“Sorry - I just meant to say I’m not really looking for...  _ that,” _ she said.

The man just shrugged and sat back down, the offense apparently forgotten. 

Surprised by his respect for boundaries, considering his rough demeanor, Lux got up and walked over to his table, standing next to it.

“But I  _ did _ overhear your conversation,” she admitted. “What’s this about a town that needs protecting?”

The halfling looked her up and down. Lux wore armor, certainly, but his expression was still full of doubt.

“No offense, little lady,” he began. “But you don’t strike me as the adventuring type.”

“Yeah,” the other one said, pointing just above Lux’s left ear. “Never seen a fighter wear a pretty lil’ flower in her hair.”

Lux cracked a grin, setting her tankard down on the table, pointing to the wall.

“Center panel.”

The two blinked in confusion.

Wordlessly, she drew a dagger from her belt, and with a swift motion, she threw it, embedding it in the wall between the men. It vibrated with the intensity of the throw, settling - as declared - into the centermost board of the wood-paneled wall. Then, Lux drew her jet-black whip, letting it fly the same distance forward before it wrapped around the handle of her knife. With a flick of her wrist, the knife was pulled out from the wall, easily returning ti her hand, as if preordained. Lux’s whip coiled itself up magically as she stowed it back at her hip, grabbing her tankard and taking a swig as she re-sheathed the dagger.

She put the tankard back down on the table, opening her eyes with an  _ ‘ahh.’ _

“Did that help convince you?” She asked, an admittedly smug smile on her face.

Both men just stared at Luxanna, then at one another, then back at Luxanna.

“It’s uh, it was a tall, dragonborn fella, white scales,” the scarred man said. “He’s down by the west end of the docks.”

“Thanks a bunch!” Lux said earnestly. She finished off her beer, turning to bring the empty tankard back to the bar on her way out. As she walked away, the two halflings both noticed three long, thin claw marks on the back of her blue steel breastplate. Judging by their proximity to one another, there was almost certainly a fourth one.

And based on the position of the first three,  _ that _ mark was on her back.

* * *

“So... you spent an entire night defending this town, and  _ then _ you climbed a massive tower and lit this Beacon at the top of it, and now you’re reporting back?”

“That’s correct.” Vivian said.

“How long did that take? There’s a possibility that time has begun to dilate between the worlds again...” Kit trailed off, staring out into space with a concerned expression.

“No, it’s been two days,” David assured.

She looked at him. “You did all that in  _ two days?” _

Vivian laughed darkly. “We’ve had a remarkably eventful weekend.”

Kit just gave them a slow nod. “Well, then. I apologize if you all may feel a bit exhausted from your impressive ordeals, but I’m afraid that we really must be heading back there. As soon as possible, preferably.”

Vivian’s eyes narrowed. “Why’s that?”

Kit looked over her shoulder. “Luke!”

A relatively shorter-than average man walked over to Kit when she called. He had stark white hair, deeply tanned skin, and rather piercing red eyes. He crossed his bare arms over his sleeveless hoodie, and Vivian noticed an odd bracelet on his right wrist - it was gold, with a shimmering, swirling series of patterns running over it. Lastly, he had a messenger bag slung over one shoulder, and what appeared to be a remarkably high-powered sniper rifle strapped to it.

“Luke here is actually being hunted by the Templars,” Kit said. “I don’t think they can track him in the other world, so I think it’s a very good idea to take him there for the time being.”

Vivian raised an eyebrow. “And  _ why _ are they hunting you?”

He shrugged, holding up his bracelet arm. “I accidentally got this, and they definitely want it back. Badly.”

Hanta crossed his arms, unimpressed. “So you nicked it?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Luke protested.

“Right.” Vivian rolled her eyes. “What’s it do?”

Luke summoned a large spear made of radiant light in his bracelet hand. He briefly twirled it before letting it vanish once more.

“It lets me do magic, and they apparently don’t like that one bit.”

“So we’ve heard,” Vivian said, looking at Kit.

“Why don’t you just take the bracelet off?” Sienna asked.

“I tried. It doesn’t come off.”

David stepped forwards, eyeing the band. “May I cast a spell to identify it?”

“Sure, be my guest,” Luke said, offering up his braceleted wrist.

“We should  _ really _ get back there, first,” Kit said, gently ushering the party back towards the cave from which they’d emerged.

“All right, all right,” Vivian capitulated. “I still have a boat up, so we can take you back to town, I suppose.”

Woody, who had been silent this whole time, slowly raised a hand.

“I uh... I don’t think I’m coming with you guys.”

Vivian raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

His robot body -  _ miraculously _ still intact, considering all the punishment it had taken over the past forty-eight hours - shrugged. “I... listen, I like you all, and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, but...” he sighed. “I  _ really _ need a break. I’m tired.”

The four of them just gave him a series of nods and understanding words - it was a  _ remarkably _ fair desire, considering what they all had been through. Especially because, as they had all recently learned, Woody was only six years old. He was  _ apparently _ fully matured by that point, but based on the wooden man’s various antics over the past few weeks, Vivian found that very hard to believe.

They all gave him individual hugs, which eventually turned into a massive group one. Vivian might have noticed the metal of his torso letting out an angry creak at Sienna’s absurdly powerful grip, but she figured that he needed enough repairs as it was already, so a little bending couldn’t be the end of the world.

“We’ll miss you,” Hanta murmured. 

“Yeah,” Woody said. “I’ll miss you guys too.” He smirked. “Except for maybe Vivian.”

“Oh, come off it, you git,” she said, the smile on her face betraying the annoyed roll of her eyes.

“I hate to cut this short, but we  _ really _ should go,” Kit said.

Vivian gave her a poisonous glare, but she’d already started walking away. “Fine.”

They all murmured a final set of goodbyes to Woody, who waved them off as they returned to the portal.

* * *

Lux had seen a fair share of towns in her day, and many of them had been a little bit worse for wear. Considering that most of the places she went had just suffered a monster attack, she was used to seeing towns that were struggling a little - the occasional damaged building, scorch or claw marks on the paths, things like that.

Bastion, though, was on a completely different level.

Once the boat she’d taken with several other fighters (and that one strange man with a sky-blue cloak and a remarkably tall hat) had docked at the little port, she’d spent the last hour or so wandering the half-ruined township. Every other building seemed to have been partly or completely burned down, and nearly all of those that remained were being used as shelters. Even the  _ ground _ was in poor shape - the paths were somewhat torn up or scorched in dozens of places. Near the mouth of one of the town’s two wide streets, there was an almost perfectly rounded indent in the ground, as if someone had plunged a massive sphere into it. The scorch marks were particularly numerous around the divot. Lux had no idea what had caused such major damage, but whatever it was must have been quite powerful.

While walking around and healing the townsfolk who had need of it, she’d heard about the massive fight that had happened two nights ago, where five mysterious travellers had decided to stay the night and assist with the defense effort, despite only arriving that day. Nobody really knew their names, but Lux did get a few interesting physical descriptions.

What was even  _ more _ impressive was that apparently, those same five adventurers had set out the very next morning and lit the Voidsear Beacon, whose brilliance now shined out over Bastion and the waves around it. According to a few warriors that she’d briefly spoken with, it now needed defenders, something that some of the other members of her expedition had volunteered for. 

Lux generally didn’t stay in one place for too long, so she definitely wasn’t going to agree to such a permanent posting. But if nothing else, there were still absolutely people around who needed healing, and a major township that needed to be repaired. It was odd, having her ‘mission’ already completed for her by the time she’d arrived, but considering all the help that Bastion still sorely needed, it was far from a waste.

Wherever there was light in the world, she would do her best to preserve it.

* * *

“Aw,  _ bloody _ hell,” Vivian said out of nowhere, halfway to the town while she stood at the helm of her conjured modern speedboat.

“What’s up?” Hanta asked. 

She sighed.“I realized that I meant to call June when we got back home, but I didn’t remember until we left. I sent her a message with that spell I just figured out, the one I used to contact Kit... and she reminded me.” She looked over at Hanta. “It’s been five years.”

He tilted his head for a moment, not understanding, but then it hit him. He sighed loudly, rubbing at his temples.

“Five years since what?” David asked, speaking up a bit over the roar of the engine.

“Since our parents died,” Vivian said. “I host a charity event every year, give two kids a scholarship ‘in their honor.’ I should  _ really _ go back and do it, even if June’s still running the company. As far as the public knows, I’m ‘on vacation’ - so if I were to miss something that personal and major, it would definitely be suspicious.”

“Ugh,  _ please _ don’t tell me I have to go,” Hanta said. Vivian laughed.

“Don’t worry, I won’t make you. It’s not as though you went to the other four.” She smiled in his direction. “That is, unless you  _ want _ to come and watch me pat my own back in front of a bunch of rich people for several hours.”

“Yeah, I think I’m gonna have to pass on that one, thanks,” Hanta said wearily.

“Shocking,” Vivian smirked. “But yes, I have to return to London for a while to prepare. Gotta select the candidates, plan the dinner, get photographed pretending to be sad over my parents’ gravestones, all that.”

“How long do you think you’ll be gone?” Sienna asked.

“Five days, give or take. I probably don’t have to leave for another day or two, though.” She eyed Kit. “Is that okay with you?”

“Mm?” the orange-haired woman asked. Her brain then seemed to process the statement, and she began rapidly nodding, waving a dismissive hand in Vivian’s direction. “Sure, yes, yes - that’s fine. Talk to the people back at base camp if you need a jet.”

Vivian raised an eyebrow. She’d had to do  _ quite _ a bit of convincing to negotiate their previous two-week break, so Kit just blindly approving another five days for her - only four days after that first break had ended - was remarkably worrisome.

  
  


The boat pulled into the port, only about an hour after they’d left it. Yet, in that time, another vessel was now moored across from their own. A small commotion had gathered just near the edge of town, a circle of people all trying to get a look.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake - we were gone for  _ one bloody hour,” _ Vivian said.

“This should be interesting,” Sienna said with a shrug.

They tied off the boat and approached the loose circle of people - most of them let the group through upon recognizing them, allowing the group to see into the center.

A young woman - approximately the twins’ age, maybe a year younger - was down on one knee, her hand extended towards a little brown-haired girl whose fingers were protectively wrapped around her elbow.

The ivory-skinned woman had radiant golden hair that fell just past her chin, not quite threatening to reach her shoulders. Her armor was rather odd - a blue steel plate that covered mostly her upper torso and a bit of her shoulders, but left her arms, stomach, and lower back uncovered. It appeared to be designed to allow for a wide range of movement while still being protective of her most vital areas, and based on the quality of the fit, it seemed to be a custom make. Metal bracers of a similar material covered her from her wrists to her elbows, but her biceps (her  _ rather muscular _ biceps, Vivian noticed) were left unarmored as well. She had an average-looking longbow slung over her shoulder, and an odd, jet-black cord wound up at her left hip. It didn’t appear to be braided or marked in any way until the handle, which was covered in a contrastingly bright set of colors, all in rhomboid shapes. Only the handle was through her belt loop, with the rest of the cord apparently remaining coiled all on its own.

The woman also wore a white hibiscus flower in her hair, just above her left ear, and she had the softest, kindest pair of cobalt eyes that Vivian had ever seen.

“It’s okay,” the woman said, her voice almost a whisper as she extended a hand to the girl. “I can help.” The girl nodded, tepidly extending the scraped arm out to the woman. With gentle fingers, she covered the wound and closed her eyes.

The flower in the woman’s hair began to glow, and it soon spread throughout her body - her gorgeous golden locks gently fluttered in a nonexistent breeze as her bare hand began to glow white. The girl’s small scrape knit itself together before their eyes, until no evidence of the wound remained. 

The glow gone, the woman reopened her impossibly beautiful eyes with a tender smile. “There,” she said. “All better!”

The little girl shook an amazed expression off of her face, looking up. She just stared at the woman for a moment, and then nodded quickly and ran off without a thank-you. This didn’t seem to bother the woman, though. The crowd dispersed as she stood up, letting out a soft  _ ‘oh!’ _ of surprise when she noticed them.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t see you there,” she said. “My name’s Luxanna, but you can call me ‘Lux’ - it’s nice to meet you!”

* * *

Four of the five newcomers introduced themselves: the tall man with the grey hair and the probably-enchanted glass thingy in his hands was “David,” the white-haired man with the red eyes was “Luke,” the teenager with the concerningly large sword was “Sienna,” and the pink-haired man was “Hanta.”

Then there was the raven-haired woman in the center of their group. It cascaded down her back and shoulders in elegant, beautiful waves, framing her face and allowing the deep crimson of her lips to really stand out against her soft alabaster skin. The woman’s warm silver eyes were wide as they stared into Luxanna’s, with the faintest bit of pink on her cheeks.

Hanta elbowed her in the ribs.

“V-Vivian,” she said, blinking as if awoken from a trance. She had a weird accent that Lux had never heard before - but she found it charming. “I’m Vivian. Lovely to meet you.”

“You too!” Lux said.  _ Wow, _ she was pretty. “So, um... are you guys the adventurers I’ve been hearing about?”

They all looked at one another.

“The ones who lit the Beacon?” Lux clarified.

“Yes, that was us,” David said. “You... you’ve heard about that?”

“Well, I originally came here to light it myself, and I wanted to meet the people who beat me to it,” she explained. “These folks around town aren’t super trusting, but they told me a bit about you guys.”

“Wait...  _ you _ planned on lighting it?” Sienna asked.

“That was my goal, yeah,” Lux admitted with a nod.

Vivian blinked. “All by yourself?”

Judging by the way they looked at one another, Lux reasoned that she  _ might _ not have been able to do it alone, considering that it had apparently taken all five of them.

“I dunno. I came on an expedition with some others, but if I’m honest...” she shrugged. “They seem more interested in the money or whatever.”

Just then, an orange-haired woman strode past them, getting uncomfortably close to her. “And who is this?” she asked, walking a full circle around Lux, examining her intently. She never met Lux’s eyes, just observing her body parts and equipment like she was appraising a statue.

“Uh...” Lux looked at the group with a silent plea for assistance.

“Sorry - Kit, maybe give her a bit of space?” Vivian asked, her arms now crossed.

“Just a second,” the woman - Kit, apparently - said, making Vivian roll her eyes.

Lux almost yelped with surprise as Kit unceremoniously took her hand, lifting up her arm to check underneath it, as if there would be some incredible bit of knowledge hidden in her armpit.

“Sorry, she’s just kinda... like this...” Sienna said.

“What did you say your name was?” Kit asked. Apparently, she hadn’t heard Sienna at all.

“Um... I’m Luxanna,” she said, trying to remain polite. “Luxanna Starsinger.”

“Once again,  _ wonderful _ to meet you,” Vivian said. She glared  _ daggers _ at Kit. “Are you quite finished?”

“Yes, sorry,” Kit said, finally backing off. Lux caught her murmuring to herself. “Fascinating, just fascinating...”

“Right,” Vivian said, with another roll of her eyes. “Apologies, again. So,  _ Luxanna.” _

She  _ loved _ the way that this woman pronounced her name.

“You’re a healer?”

“Yup!” Lux said. 

“That’s interesting,” David said. “If you don’t mind my asking, where does that magic come from? I understand it’s a bit of a rare trait - it often requires a god of some sort...” he looked over at Hanta, who shrugged a shoulder.

“I can do a bit of field medicine. I get it from someone called Kessva,” he said.

Lux had no idea who that was.

“Well, I don’t really know much about that - and I don’t worship a god or anything. I uh, I’ve been told I’m a ‘green knight?’ Or a ‘fey knight?’ I think they both apply.”

“You’re not wearing green,” Sienna said, confused.

Lux gave her a grateful look. “That’s what I keep telling people!”

“I believe she’s a paladin,” Kit explained to the group.

“Right,” Vivian said. “Something new every day.”

“Nice to meet you, Lux,” Hanta said. “So, to the Beacon?”

“Sure,” Sienna replied, turning.

Lux perked up. “Wait, you guys are gonna go there?”

“Yes,” David said. For some reason, he seemed less than thrilled about it. “It’s lit for now, but it needs defenders to make sure it stays that way.”

“Also, I wanted to see it,” Luke said with a casual shrug.

“As do I,” Kit agreed, nodding gravely.

“Oh,” Lux said, a bit overwhelmed by meeting all these new people at once. “That sounds really cool!”

“Wanna come with us?” Sienna asked over her shoulder. Vivian shut her open mouth - it seemed like she’d been about to say the same, but the offer had caught in her throat.

Lux blinked in surprise, but then quickly nodded gratefully. “U-um... yeah, I’d like that!”

* * *

Vivian leaned on the wooden railing, gazing out into the calm blue sea. 

It was nice to not be driving the boat for a change. She normally had to conjure her own to get the group around The Descent, with David and his cartography software navigating her. They’d also been gifted what seemed to be a magical sail - when Sienna held it up while standing in the center of the boat, it nearly doubled the craft’s speed, despite not being an actual sailboat. This time, though, some of the soldiers in Bastion were travelling with them, to help fortify the Beacon and prevent it from future assaults. Fortunately, they had their own boat.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Vivian murmured, turning back to the deck. Pretty much everyone was just chatting nearby, so she made to join them.

“So how does your magic work?” Luxanna asked of Luke.

“It comes from this thing, that’s all I really know,” he said, showing off his bracelet.

Lux nodded, closing her eyes. She took a deep breath in, as if she were attempting to smell the air. Vivian exchanged a raised eyebrow with David before Lux’s eyes popped back open.

“Your magic is like mine!” She said brightly, to Luke. She looked over at Vivian. “And yours too!”

“How so?” Vivian asked.

Lux shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. My magic always felt... warm.  _ Bright, _ I guess. And you two are similar.”

“How can you tell?” Luke asked.

She shrugged again. “I can smell it on you.”

“Mm,” Vivian hummed, intrigued. Hanta could  _ see _ magic, but she’d never met someone who could  _ smell  _ it. Either way...

“That actually reminds me, I wanted to ask you two something,” she said. “I can usually summon a boat that helps us get around these islands, but seeing as I’ll be gone for a while, I was hoping I could teach one of you the spell. Do you think it’s something you could learn?”

She hoped that at least  _ one _ of them could. She and David had shown each other a few magical tricks as of late, but unfortunately, the specifics of her spell to conjure vehicles made it essentially un-castable for him. David didn’t hold a remarkable amount of magical power directly within himself - instead, the  _ vast _ majority of his magical ability was contained in his two books. Unlike what she’d been learning recently, this spell was one that Vivian knew inherently, so she had no idea how to write it down for him to copy over.

“Probably not,” Luke said. “I don’t really understand how my magic works, I just kinda... do it.”

“I don’t understand too much about my magic either, but I can give it a shot!” Lux said.

Vivian hid a grin. She had been secretly hoping that Luxanna would be the one to say yes.

“Right,” she said, grinning as if she had no ulterior motive whatsoever. “Then I can take Luxanna here and try to show her how to make boats. Come find us if we’re not back by the time we make port!” She offered Lux a hand, which was accepted, and pulled her up.

Vivian ignored her brother’s teasingly raised eyebrow and took Luxanna below decks with her.

* * *

“This should do nicely,” Vivian said, finding a small, relatively featureless chamber for them to sit in belowdecks. She tossed her gorgeous raven hair over her shoulder like it  _ didn’t _ solidify her position as one of the most beautiful women Lux had ever seen, and pulled the handle, offering that Lux step inside.

The room didn’t have chairs or anything, just a small portside window, so Lux sat cross-legged on the floor, her back against the wall. Vivian closed the door and did the same - even still, their knees were only about six inches apart in the tight space.

“So, how does the spell work?” Lux asked.

“Do you think if I start casting it, you can follow?” Vivian asked.

She shrugged. “It’s worth a try!”

Vivian nodded, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she began making arcane gestures with her hands, and Lux could feel the slight magical energy in the air as it gathered. The gestures were strange - it almost appeared as if she were assembling a small machine with invisible components and tools. Maybe something clockwork, like one of the little watches she had seen a gnomish shopkeeper selling in a smaller city once. Once she started up, Lux actually noticed an incredibly faint ticking sound, and the hands of a clock had appeared in Vivian’s eyes, centered on her pupils. She stared at the small visual change, utterly fascinated by it - until Vivian gave her a confused look, making Lux blush and look away.

“So, if I may ask,” Vivian said. “What are your plans after seeing the Beacon? Do you think you’ll stay with this little group of ours?”

“Um... y-yeah, if that’s okay with everyone,” Lux said, a bit embarrassed. “I... I dunno. I’ve mostly been travelling alone for the past few years, so... it  _ sounds _ like it’d be nice.”

Vivian just hummed her agreement. “I can understand that. I honestly don’t  _ want _ to leave in the first place, but I can’t really get around it.”

Lux nodded. “Where are you going?”

Vivian sighed, her arcane gestures slowing as if she didn’t want the reminder. The faint ticking sound slowed as well, resuming its uniform pace when she continued. “I... well, it’s rather complicated, but essentially, I have to go do a thing that I know will ultimately help some smart, talented young people who deserve it, but there’s so much bloody  _ pageantry _ about the whole affair that I don’t look forward to actually going through the motions of it all.”

Lux blinked, not sure how to process that.

“I’m sorry, that’s...  _ vague,” _ Vivian said, rubbing her temples with one hand before continuing. “You see, I work for a very large company - I own it, in fact - and I’m using some of our money to put two smart young people through a very good school.”

“That’s really kind of you,” Lux said. She’d never had remarkably formal schooling, but there were a few scattered academies around the country. Some taught magic, various trades, the arts, that sort of thing. 

Vivian gave her a soft smile. “Thank you. But, because it’s  _ this _ company, I have to turn it into a whole party for other rich people so they can pat themselves on the back for donating to the fund in the first place, and...” she rolled her eyes. “Anyways. You said you’d been travelling alone?”

“O-oh!” Lux said, surprised by the change in topic. “I... yeah. I used to travel with my old sword master, but...”

Vivian’s warm silver eyes filled with deep sympathy. “Oh, Luxanna, I’m sorry...”

“It’s okay - he didn’t  _ die,” _ Lux said, causing Vivian to exhale with relief. She shrugged. “But, well... he got really close, for a minute there. It’s actually how I discovered that I can heal. He had already retired before we started travelling together, so after that, he just decided to head back home, and  _ actually _ retire this time. So don’t worry - he’s totally fine!”

Vivian slowly nodded, respectful of the admission.

There was a short silence.

“I  _ do _ understand the loneliness, though,” she said, her voice soft. “Sometimes when a person leaves your life for a long period, it’s a  _ form _ of losing them. I... have some experience. I know how difficult it can be.”

“Yeah,” Lux said, giving her a wan smile. “It’s really tough.” 

Carefully, she reached out and put a hand on Vivian’s knee. The other woman blinked in surprise for a moment before softening, a wordless thanks in her clockwork eyes.

“Still, though,  _ if _ you’re going to be travelling with everyone upstairs while I’m gone...” Vivian began.

“I, um, I hope so,” Lux said. “I... I like everybody. I’ve got a good feeling about this little group.”

Vivian smiled. “Yes - I think it’s a safe assumption that we all feel the same about you.”

Lux felt her cheeks get pink as she realized that Vivian had included herself in that statement.

“Regardless,” Vivian said, letting out a little sigh. “You see... Hanta, David, and Sienna... they’re like a  _ family _ to me.” She laughed. “Hanta actually  _ is _ family, but still.”

Lux tilted her head. “Really?”

“He’s my twin brother.”

“I... um... you two look almost nothing alike.”

“It’s because he changed his hair,” she laughed. “If you get a chance to see us side-by-side, look at our cheekbones - that’s the Noya family trademark.”

“All right,” Lux said with a chuckle. 

“Quite. But what I’m asking you is...” Vivian trailed off, nervous. “I... I always try to  _ protect _ them all. I’m not a healer like you, but I care about Hanta, David, and Sienna more than any other people in the entire world. So... while I’m gone, I just want to ask...” she sighed again, apparently resolving to just say it. “Would you please try to keep my family safe?.”

Lux’s face went totally blank with surprise at her naked honesty. Up until this point, Vivian had been all cool smiles, warm laughter, and smooth conversation. But now, the sheer  _ sincerity _ in her face - the open, unabashed, genuine  _ worry _ \- it took her breath away.

Lux put a hand on Vivian’s knee again, squeezing it.

“I will.” She nodded, meeting Vivian’s silver eyes with determination. “I promise.”

“Thank you, Luxanna,” she said with a grateful nod. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “I... I can’t describe how much that means to me.”

They shared a heavy, emotional silence for a moment. Then, Lux realized that her hand was  _ still  _ on Vivian’s knee and she blushed, pulling it away as if her fingers were suddenly burned by the contact. She met Vivian’s eyes with an apology, but found a smile in them already as Vivian chuckled along, also blushing a little.

“Sorry,” Vivian laughed. “I didn’t mean to make this such an intense moment all of a sudden...”

“It’s okay,” Lux laughed. “It’s just funny, I guess.”

“Yes,” Vivian said with a grateful nod. “Er... anyways...”

Lux smiled again, before realizing something. “Oh, I wanted to ask - it’s just David, Sienna, and Hanta? Not Luke?”

Vivian shrugged. “I met the man about four hours ago. He seems fine, I suppose - though I’m almost  _ certain _ he stole that bracelet of his. If he proves himself trustworthy to you, then that’s wonderful, but I can’t say that we’re close.”

Lux shrugged, admitting that was fair. “What about Kit?”

A frustrated expression immediately passed onto Vivian’s face. “Honestly?”

Lux nodded.

“Placing my family in her hands concerns me a very great deal.”

“Why’s that? Isn’t she, like... your boss?” Lux vaguely remembered Sienna mentioning that offhand in their walk to the boat. 

“Technically, yes,” Vivian said, though it was clear she wasn’t happy about it. “But her...  _ obsession _ about this place - about throwing herself into danger - it’s worrying.”

Lux just raised an eyebrow, prompting Vivian’s sigh before a tired explanation.

“The last time we came here, she was so insistent upon exploring this place, investigating it, that I  _ barely _ managed to get her to leave with us. We spent a night here in an abandoned old castle, you see, and the creatures came for us - it was before we lit the Beacon.”

Lux nodded.

“Kit  _ saw _ how dangerous they were, and how they pursue living beings wherever they’re found. But when were leaving for  _ two weeks, _ she wanted to stay there in the castle -  _ alone.” _

“Jeez,” Lux said. “From what I’ve heard about these creatures, that sounds…  _ really _ stupid.”

“That’s certainly one way of putting it.” Vivian shrugged. “I think that deep down,  _ very _ deep, she doesn’t harbor any ill will towards us. But... she keeps secrets, she runs off on her own, and she seems hell-bent on throwing her own life away in this place just so she can learn about it. So, if I’m honest, while we’re  _ technically _ on the same side, all that...” Vivian met her eyes. “I wouldn’t trust Kit as far as I could throw her.” She allowed herself a small grin. “Without magic, anyways.”

* * *

“So… that fight in Bastion,” Lux asked, making Vivian look up to meet her eyes. “What was  _ that _ like?”

Vivian let out a small laugh, giving Lux a noncommittal shrug while putting the finishing touches on her spell. “It was a hell of a fight,” she finally said. “The only reason that any of us survived is because we were on defense - fortunately, the zombies and the slithering masses of tentacles and what-have-you were far too stupid to do anything besides mindlessly walk into my spell.”

Lux raised an interested eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Did you see how the town has those two major streets, and that they’re pretty much the only way in?”

Lux nodded.

“Well, we were able to funnel the creatures in through those areas - and I blocked one off by, well…” she gave Lux a cheeky grin, one that she  _ normally _ reserved for cute girls at the pub back home in London. “I basically summoned a concentrated lightning storm.”

“Whoa,” Lux said, her blue eyes wide with fascination. She blinked, realizing something. “Wait, so… that huge hole in the ground, near the entrance to the main street?”

Vivian’s eyes sparkled as she gave a little wink. “That was me.”

The blank look of utter wonder and sheer, honest admiration on Luxanna’s face made Vivian’s entire year.

  
  
“I think I’ve almost got it,” Lux said, her eyes closed in concentration.

Vivian was impressed - despite her self-proclaimed lack of arcane knowledge, Luxanna had taken to understanding the spell rather easily. From what Vivian could tell about her casting, they went about performing magic in almost completely different ways. While she was logical, methodical, and organized, Luxanna’s magic was far more impulse-oriented, far more natural - it was as if Vivian had a series of complex mathematical ideas for navigating a maze, and Luxanna just did it by feel. She hardly moved her hands as she cast, which Vivian found fascinating.

And, considering the blonde’s relative ease with the brand new spell, just a  _ tiny  _ bit frustrating.

Most of Vivian’s magic still came from her soul, which she imagined many other mages would consider “cheating,” at least in terms of the amount of arcane study that it allowed her to essentially skip. However, she had lately been picking up a few more spells by other means - perhaps just to show Kit that she  _ was  _ smart enough to figure magic out in that way.

Vivian suddenly realized that a very significant motivator for the vast majority of her life’s work was spite.

That probably wasn’t the healthiest thing in the world.

Either way, Luxanna’s magic  _ also _ appeared inherent to her very being - but it seemed to be in a bit of a different way. It didn’t provide her with much of a magical understanding or anything. As far as Vivian could tell, it was as if Luxanna was simply asking the universe very nicely to perform whatever spell she was casting, and the universe was ready to capitulate. Luxanna didn’t even seem to fully grasp how  _ impressive _ this task was as she performed it on her very first try.

Vivian shook her head with tacit amazement.

_ Gods, what a woman. _

“I’ve got it!” Lux said, proudly opening up her cobalt eyes. “Just  _ one  _ more little thing...”

Vivian suddenly realized that she had just taught Luxanna how to summon a large watercraft, and the two of them were currently sitting in a  _ very _ small chamber.

“Wait, don’t actually  _ cast _ it!” She shouted.

Lux, not fully understanding, moved to spread her hands wide - a final gesture to make the vehicle appear.

Like lightning, Vivian whipped out and snatched the other woman by the wrists, barely managing to prevent her from spontaneously crushing them with a giant boat.

“O-oh,” Lux said, catching on. She looked up, and around the tiny room, as if she’d forgotten where she was until now. “Oh. Yeah. I don’t think that there’s enough space in here.”

“There definitely isn’t,” Vivian laughed. “Still, well done. Congratulations, Luxanna - you can now summon yourself a boat from thin air.”

Lux nodded, chuckling. “Yeah. Just glad I didn’t do it right this second.”

Vivian smirked. “Indeed.”

A beat passed, and she realized that she was still holding Luxanna’s wrists.

“Oh, my apologies,” she said, letting go. Her face flushed and she looked away. “I-I didn’t mean to hold you prisoner like that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lux said, a smile easily making its way to her face. “I didn’t mind. Your hands are really soft.” As if she’d hardly said anything meaningful, she popped to her feet, opening the door to their little chamber. “C’mon - we should go back to the others. I bet we’re landing soon!”

Vivian stuttered an agreement, standing up to follow after her.

  
_ What a woman, indeed. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, our girls *finally* meet! And now that they have had one actual conversation, the "burn" part of this slowburn can actually... well... begin.  
> Anyways, thanks so much for reading! Sorry if the first bit of this chapter felt a little odd and unfocused - the session(s) that it describes were mostly similar. We had all just spent *several* sessions in a row racing against the clock to light the Beacon, so when we were finally free to do whatever we wanted, we were kind of at a loss for where to start, lol :p  
> Fun fact - Vivian blushing upon meeting Lux, to the point where she genuinely forgets to introduce herself, was just as much an in-character thing as it was me realizing that now I play two characters at once. I'd been so caught up in describing Lux to the party and performing from her perspective that Vivian... just didn't say anything for a while, until Hanta elbowed her (which did really happen in-game). I genuinely stumbled over my words precisely like she did in the chapter because I realized that I'd forgotten - but it kinda ended up being a perfect useless lesbian moment, lol.
> 
> Thank you once again to all of these amazing people!
> 
> -Psyntax, the Dungeon Master for this campaign
> 
> -Hanta Noya is played by Sidney (https://violahcello.tumblr.com/, NiMing_YouLing here on ao3)
> 
> -David Armitage is played by Arthur
> 
> -Sienna Baker is played by Meri (@primalmeridian on Twitter)
> 
> -Woodular, aka "Woody" and Luke are both played by Atlas (https://atlas-prime.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thanks again for reading! See you next time!
> 
> -Red


End file.
